startups News of 01/16/21

Tracy Chou Launches Block Party To Combat Online Harassment And Abuse

Block Party , an anti-harassment startup that aims to help folks feel safer on social media founded by Tracy Chou, launched today. Currently only available for Twitter, Block Party helps people filter out the content they don’t want to see and ...

Bumble Files To Go Public

The dating and networking service Bumble has  filed to go public. The company, launched by a former co-founder of the IAC-owned Tinder , plans to list on the Nasdaq stock exchange, using the ticker symbol “BMBL.” Bumble’s ...

Corporate Credit Card Platform Moss Raises $25.5 Million

German startup Moss has raised a $25.5 million (€21 million) funding round led by Valar Ventures. Existing investors Cherry Ventures and Global Founders Capital are also participating. Moss provides credit cards and a spending platform to small and ...

Extra Crunch Roundup: Antitrust Jitters, SPAC Odyssey, White-Hot IPOs, More

Some time ago, I gave up on the idea of finding a thread that connects each story in the weekly Extra Crunch roundup; there are no unified theories of technology news. The stories that left the deepest impression were related to two news pegs that ...

GitLab Oversaw A $195 Million Secondary Sale That Values The Company At $6 Billion

GitLab has confirmed with TechCrunch that it oversaw a $195 million secondary sale that values the company at $6 billion. CNBC broke the story earlier today. The company’s impressive valuation comes after its most recent 2019 Series E in ...

Lessons From Top Hat’S Acquisition Spree

Top Hat , a startup that digitizes textbooks and turns them into an interactive experience for college students, announced on Wednesday that it has acquired yet another business: Fountainhead Press. The acquisition marks Top Hat’s third scoop of a ...

Why Does TechCrunch Cover So Many Early-Stage Funding Rounds?

Funding-round stories are TechCrunch’s bread and butter. For early-stage companies, the fact that an investor has put thousands, millions (or billions) into an idea that will likely fail, and might never make money, is big news. That’s a story ...

It’S Holiday Season For Tech Unicorns

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 . Did you follow all of the unicorn news from the last couple of weeks? No? Here’s a list of ...

Mike Cagney Is Testing The Boundaries Of The Banking System For Himself — And Others

Founder Mike Cagney is always pushing the envelope, and investors love him for it. Not long sexual harassment allegations prompted him to leave SoFi, the personal finance company that he cofounded in 2011, he raised $50 million for new lending ...

Zephr Raises $8m To Help News Publishers Grow Subscription Revenue

Zephr has raised $8 million in a new funding round led by Bertelsmann Digital Media Investments (owned by media giant Bertelsmann). The London-headquarted startup’s customers already include publishers like McClatchy, News Corp Australia, ...

Revolut Lets Businesses Accept Online Payments

Fintech startup Revolut is launching its own acquiring solution . With this move, the company is competing directly with Stripe, Adyen, Braintree or Checkout.com. This is an in-house product and not just a fresh coat of paint on an existing ...

Enter New Markets And Embrace A Distributed Workforce To Grow During A Pandemic

Sarah Cole Contributor Sarah Cole is a senior associate in Taylor Wessing 's Silicon Valley office. She advises mostly North American technology and life sciences companies on their investments into the UK and Europe, including ...

Health Tech Venture Firm OTV Closes New $170 Million Fund And Expands Into Asia

OTV (formerly known as Olive Tree Ventures), an Israeli venture capital firm that focuses on digital health tech, announced it has closed a new fund totaling $170 million. The firm also launched a new office in Shanghai, China to spearhead its ...

Fantasy Startup Esports One Raises $4m More

Esports One , a startup bringing the fantasy approach to esports, is announcing that it has raised an additional $4 million in funding. When I first wrote about Esports One in April , co-founder and COO Sharon Winter described it as the first ...

Stripe Announces Embedded Business Banking Service Stripe Treasury

Fintech startup Stripe has announced an ambitious new product today called Stripe Treasury . The company is partnering with banks to offer a banking-as-a-service API. In other words, Stripe clients will be able to provide bank accounts to their ...

Boost ROI With Intent Data And Personalized Multichannel Marketing Campaigns

Coronavirus is causing large and small businesses to drastically cut marketing budgets. In Forrester’s self-described “most optimistic scenario,” the analysts project a 28% drop in U.S. marketing spend by the end of 2021. Even Google is cutting its ...

Find Out How Startups Like Skyroot And Bluefield Are Building New Industries At TC Sessions: Space 2020

At our fast-approaching first TC Sessions: Space event, which is happening December 16-17, we’re going to be highlighting some of the most exciting startups and founders tackling big problems with innovative and groundbreaking solutions. ...

VCs Who Want Better Outcomes Should Use Data To Reduce Founder Team Risk

Janneke Niessen Contributor Share on Twitter Janneke Niessen is a partner at CapitalT , a serial entrepreneur and a tech diversity advocate. VCs expect the companies they invest in to use ...

Pave Raises Millions To Bring Transparency To Startup Compensation

Compensation within private venture-backed startups can be a confusing minefield that if unsuccessfully navigated can lead to inconsistent salaries and the kind of ambiguity that breeds an unhappy workforce. Pave , a San Francisco-based startup ...

Everlywell Raises $175 Million To Expand Virtual Care Options And Scale Its At-Home Health Testing

Digital health startup Everlywell has raised a $175 million Series D funding round, following relatively fast on the heels of a $25 million Series C round it closed in February of this year. The Series D included a host of new investors, including ...