startups News of 09/27/20

Is Your Startup The Next Tik Tok?

Editor’s note:   Get this free weekly recap of TechCrunch news that any startup can use by email every Saturday morning (7 a.m. PT).  Subscribe here . And I don’t mean building an app that gets the world addicted to short-form videos. I ...

Black Founders Face A Unique Set Of Challenges

The notion that Black people in America need to work twice as hard as others to succeed may be a depressing sentiment, but it has been deeply ingrained into the psyches of many African-Americans. At TechCrunch Disrupt, several Black founders spoke ...

Privacy Data Management Innovations Reduce Risk, Create New Revenue Channels

Mark Settle Contributor Mark Settle is a seven-time CIO, three-time CIO 100 award winner and two-time book author. His most recent book is "Truth from the Valley: A Practical Primer on IT Management for the Next Decade." ...

Want To Hire And Retain High-Quality Developers? Give Them Stimulating Work

Phil Alves Contributor Share on Twitter Devsquad founder and CEO Phil Alves is an expert entrepreneur with more than 15 years of experience in the tech industry leading product development teams ...

HumanForest Suspends London E-Bike Sharing Service, Cuts Jobs After Customer Accident

UK-based startup HumanForest has suspended its nascent ‘free’ e-bike service in London this week, after experiencing “mechanical” issues and after a user had an accident on one of its bikes, TechCrunch has learned. The suspension ...

Don’T Miss The Q&A Sessions At TC Sessions: Mobility 2020

It’s nearly October, startup fans and that means TC Sessions: Mobility 2020 is right around the corner. On October 6 & 7, you’ll experience an incredible two-day agenda packed with the top leaders, visionaries, makers and investors, ...

Indonesian Cloud Kitchen Startup Yummy Gets $12 Million Series B Led By SoftBank Ventures Asia

Yummy Corporation , which claims to be the largest cloud kitchen management company in Indonesia, has raised $12 million in Series B funding, led by SoftBank Ventures Asia. Co-founder and chief executive officer Mario Suntanu told TechCrunch that the ...

Why Isn’T Robinhood A Verb Yet?

Hello and welcome back to  Equity , TechCrunch’s VC-focused podcast ( now on Twitter! ), where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines. This week  Natasha Mascarenhas ,  Danny Crichton and  your humble servant gathered to chat through ...

Announcing The Final Agenda For TC Sessions: Mobility 2020

TC Sessions: Mobility is back and we’re excited to give the final look of what and who is coming to the main stage. Before we get into who is coming, let’s tackle one important change from our 2019 inaugural event: this year, TC ...

The First Rule Of BookClub? No Boring Book Clubs.

Book clubs can be magical. Bring together a group of friends, tear apart a book and all of a sudden the words have a second, paperless, life. But what if the author could join in the banter? Imagine riffing with Roxane Gay , debating with ...

3 Founders On Why They Pursued Alternative Startup Ownership Structures

There is no one-size-fits all model for building a startup. At TechCrunch Disrupt, we heard from a handful of founders about alternative approaches to creating a sustainable company that ensures more than just VCs and early founders benefit from ...

Learning How To Ask Questions Is An Essential Skill For Startup Founders

Mercedes Bent Contributor Share on Twitter Mercedes Bent is a partner at Lightspeed where she invests in consumer, edtech and fintech companies. For many of us, learning to ask questions was ...

Entrepreneurship And Investing As Social Good

Sree Kolli Contributor Share on Twitter Sree Kolli is co-founder of Conduit , a premium investment platform that connects founders with successful operators, family offices and select VCs worldwide. ...

Rephrase.Ai Raises $1.5m To Use Synthetic Media For Personalized Sales Pitches

Bangalore-based Rephrase.ai has an ambitious vision for reshaping how movies and videos are made. CEO Ashray Malhotra laid it out for me yesterday, saying that his co-founder Nisheeth Lahoti “came up with this concept — he wants to build ...

NUVIA Raises $240m From Mithril To Make Climate-Ready Enterprise Chips

Climate change is on everyone’s minds these days, what with the outer Bay Area on fire, orange skies above San Francisco, and a hurricane season that is bearing down on the East Coast with alacrity (and that’s just the United States in the past ...

As Tech Stocks Dip, Is Insurtech Startup Root Targeting An IPO?

During the week’s news cycle one particular bit of reporting slipped under our radar: Root Insurance is tipped by Reuters to be prepping an IPO that could value the neo-insurance provider at around $6 billion. Coming after two 2020 ...

E-Commerce Platform Whitebox Raises $18m

Whitebox , a startup that manages e-commerce logistics and fulfillment for a variety for brands, has raised $18 million in Series B funding. While discussing the new funding, CEO Marcus Startzel repeated a point he made after Whitebox raised ...

Airship Acquires SMS Commerce Company ReplyBuy

Airship is announcing that it has acquired mobile commerce startup ReplyBuy . The startup (which was a finalist at TechCrunch’s 1st and Future competition in 2016) works with customers like entertainment venues and professional and ...

Valar Triples Down On Petal, Leading $55m Series C Round Into The Credit Card Disruptor

Sometimes raising venture capital can be as simple as talking to your existing investor and having them wire over another check. When we last caught up with Petal in January 2019, the startup was hot off its $30 million Series B round and was ...

Snyk Acquires DeepCode To Boost Its Code Review Smarts

Switzerland-based machine learning code review startup DeepCode — which bills itself as ‘Grammarly for coders’ — has been acquired by Snyk , a post-unicorn valuation cybersecurity startup which is focused on helping ...