Browsing Category: Startups

  • Indian education startup Byju’s is fundraising at a $10B valuation

    Byju’s, an education learning startup in India that has seen a surge in its popularity in recent weeks amid the coronavirus outbreak, is in talks to raise as much as $400 million in fresh capital at a $10 billion valuation, said three people familiar with the matter. The additional capital would be part of the …

    May 1, 2020 | by Raheel
  • As COVID-19 dries up funding, only drought-resistant cannabis startups will survive

    The COVID-19 crisis is creating an untold amount of uncertainty through every business sector, but for cannabis startups, it’s exacerbating a critical market that was already in decline. TechCrunch spoke to Schwazze CEO Justin Dye following his company’s recent rebrand. He joined the company when it was Colorado’s Medicine Man Technologies (MMT) in late 2019 …

    May 1, 2020 | by Raheel
  • KlearNow raises $16 million to bring customs clearance industry into the digital age

    Customs is the sieve of international supply chains. And yet despite its critical role, clearing customs for freight brokers can be a slow and opaque process reliant on manual data entry and prone to errors. Silicon Valley-based KlearNow has developed a platform that aims to bring customs clearance into the digital age. Now, with $16 …

    May 1, 2020 | by Raheel
  • Guilded raises $7 million for its competitive gaming-focused chat app

    Gaming platforms have earned serious clout with investors in recent years. Add in the VC excitement surrounding collaboration tools and it’s no surprised there’s interest in backing another gaming chat app. Guilded is creating a chat platform designed for competitive gaming and esports that focuses heavily on keeping gamers organized and connected with their teams. …

    May 1, 2020 | by Raheel
  • As lockdowns stretch on, is edtech passing or failing?

    Back in January, Georgia Tech professor David Joyner got a cryptic email from a student based in Wuhan, China. “I’m under quarantine, but my internet access is okay so I have more time to spend on classwork, I wanted to let you know,” the message read. Unsure why Wuhan would be under quarantine, Joyner did …

    May 1, 2020 | by Raheel
  • Mark Cuban: ‘Raising money isn’t an accomplishment, it’s an obligation’

    Mark Cuban isn’t impressed that you’ve raised money. “If you think the accomplishment is raising money first, we’re probably not gonna get along,” said Cuban in an Extra Crunch Live interview. “If your orientation is ‘I got to raise the money first,’ you don’t really have a company yet, and you really haven’t accomplished anything …

    May 1, 2020 | by Raheel
  • IPOs, crypto funds and other things I missed this week

    Hello and welcome back to our regular morning look at private companies, public markets and the gray space in between. What a week it’s been. I’m exhausted. Not only are we another cycle deeper into the COVID-19 quarantine, but there seems to be more news than ever to sift through. I’ve fallen behind. So, today, …

    May 1, 2020 | by Raheel
  • Monzo recruits former Amex exec Sujata Bhatia as its new COO

    More personnel changes are afoot at Monzo, as the U.K. challenger bank continues to bolster its leadership team. Specifically, TechCrunch has learned that Sujata Bhatia, a former American Express executive in Europe, has been recruited as Monzo’s new Chief Operating Officer, replacing previous COO Tom Foster-Carter (who left the bank rather suddenly in November to …

    May 1, 2020 | by Raheel
  • How this startup built and exited to Twitter in 1,219 days

    By the summer of 2016, Marie Outtier had spent eight years as a consultant advising media agencies and martech companies on marketing growth strategy. Pierre-Jean “PJ” Camillieri started as a music software engineer before joining one of Apple’s consumer electronics divisions. Inspired by Siri, he left to start Timista, a smart lifestyle assistant. When the …

    April 30, 2020 | by Raheel
  • Smart home startup Josh.ai raises $11 million to offer a home assistant alternative to Alexa

    Directly taking on Google and Amazon generally seems to be an ill-advised strategy for a young startup. It’s even more complicated when you’re competing on the home assistants front, a technically complex, capital-intensive future platform into which both tech giants have dumped substantial sums. Over the past few years, the small smart home startup Josh.ai …

    April 30, 2020 | by Raheel