TubeMogul, Uber alums launch Arize AI for AI observability

A new startup called Arize AI is building what it calls a real-time analytics platform for “observability” in artificial intelligence and machine learning.

The company is led by CEO Jason Lopatecki, who has also served as chief strategy officer and chief innovation officer at TubeMogul, the video ad company acquired by Adobe. TubeMogul’s co-founder

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Whatever lesson WeWork was supposed to teach, it doesn't appear to have made much impact

So much for pessimism

After WeWork exploded there was — at least supposedly — a change in sentiment among investors and founders alike. Gone were the days of easy nine-figure rounds, expensive growth, negative unit economics and the rest of the excess that Startupland has enjoyed ove

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Want to spice up the bedroom without paying for pills or awkward visits to a sex therapist? A new app called Lover lets you take a sexual personality quiz, explore carnal knowledge tutorials and discretely figure out which turn-ons you share with your partner. Built by board-certified sexual medicine clinical psychologist Dr. Britney Blair, Lover

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Noom competitor OurPath rebrands as Second Nature, raises $10M Series A

Back in 2018, OurPath emerged as a startup in the U.K. tackling the problem of diabetes. The company helped customers fight the disease, and raised a $3 million round of funding by combining advice from health experts with tracking technology via a smartphone app to help people build healthy habits and lose weight.

Now rebranded as Second Nature,

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Remember when Zenefits imploded, and kicked out CEO Parker Conrad. Well, Conrad launched a new employee onboarding startup called Rippling, and now he’s going after another HR company called Gusto with a new billboard, “Outgrowing Gusto? Presto change-o.”

The problem is, Gusto got it taken down by issuing a cease - desist order to Rippling

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In case you haven’t heard, VCs are loving on workplace software as of late, and productivity tools that help teams collaborate seem to be a particular frothy area of investment. A smattering of top VC firms and angels, including General Catalyst, First Round Capital, Bloomberg Beta, Biz Stone and Ellen Pao, are throwing their confidence behind a

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“I don’t feel good about that. That sucks,” Chrys Bader-Wechseler reflects when asked about the bullying that went down on the anonymous app Secret he co-founded in 2013. After $35 million raised, 15 million users and a spectacular flame out two years later, the startup was dead. “Since I left Secret I feel alive and aligned with my values and my

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Daily Crunch: HQ Trivia is dead

The Daily Crunch is TechCrunch’s roundup of our biggest and most important stories. If you’d like to get this delivered to your inbox every day at around 9am Pacific, you can subscribe here.

1. HQ Trivia shuts down after acquisition falls through

HQ Trivia is dead. On Valentine’s Day, the company laid off its full team of 25. The company had a deal i

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“If I was running Clearbanc by myself, it probably would have gone off the cliff eight times at this point,” says Clearbanc co-founder Andrew D’Souza. 

“If I were running the company by myself, it would be half its size,” adds Michele Romanow, Clearbanc’s other co-founder.

In addition to starting the $420 million-backed fintech company together,

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InVideo raises $2.5M and launches an automated assistant to make your videos better

Video editing startup InVideo has new funding and a new product.

The San Francisco-headquartered company bills itself as the easiest way for anyone to create professional-quality videos, using a drag-and-drop interface along with a library of templates and stock photos and videos. The resulting videos can then be optimized for Facebook, Instagram,

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Bostonyear jump starts as two local startups raise $520M in two rounds

Hello and welcome back to our regular morning look at private companies, public markets and the gray space in between.

Late last week two Boston-based companies raised big rounds. The size of the two investments — each over the $100 million mark — and their rapid succession made them stand out.

The pair of investments raised a question: Is Boston

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With so many new investors, the old seed fundraise playbook needs a rewrite

6 strategic stages of seed fundraising in 2020

Seed fundraising is rarely easy, but it certainly used to be a lot less complicated than it is today. In a simpler world, a seed investor (or maybe two) would lead a round, which meant that they would write the terms of the deal in a term sheet and then pass that document

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Robotic process automation — the ability to automate certain repetitive software-based tasks to free up people to focus on work that computers cannot do — has become a major growth area in the world of IT. Today, a startup called Aisera that is coming out of stealth has taken this idea and supercharged it by using artificial intelligence to help

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MotoRefi raises $8.6 million to bring its auto refinancing platform to the masses

Americans are saddled with $1.2 trillion in auto loans, according to data collected by the Federal Reserve. And while that debt can be refinanced, even U.S. car owners who know it’s an option face a complicated task.

MotoRefi, a new fintech startup that was born out of QED Investors in 2017, says it has developed an auto refinancing platform that

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Why startups are raising more venture debt as VC dollars near all-time records

Hello and welcome back to our regular morning look at private companies, public markets and the gray space in between.

As I write to you, SaaS and cloud stocks are busy setting fresh all-time highs and as we’ve seen, venture interest in modern software companies is pushing more money into the sector. But despite it appearing to be an incredibly

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TC Early Stage SF goes down on April 28, and we are getting pretty damn excited about it!

The show will bring together 50+ experts across startup core competencies, such as fundraising, operations and marketing. We’ll hear from VCs on how to create the perfect pitch deck and how to identify the right investors for you. We’ll hear from lawyers on how

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Good morning friends, and welcome back to TechCrunch’s Equity Monday, a short-form audio hit to kickstart your week. Regular Equity episodes still drop Friday morning, so if you’ve listened to the show over the years don’t worry — we’re not changing the main show.

Here’s last week’s episode with Danny Crichton and Bessemer’s Elliott Robinson which

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This co-op wants to put money back into patients& hands

Too often, people are asked to give away their insights and time for free. Jen Horonjeff, founder and CEO of healthcare startup Savvy, knows this first hand and is trying to change that by applying a cooperative model to her business.

As an infant, Horonjeff was diagnosed with juvenile idiopathic arthritis. Since then, she has been diagnosed with a

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Kickstarter workers vote to unionize

Kickstarter today announced that its staff has decided to unionize. The move reflects a broader movement for worker representation among tech employees. The site joins a growing list of companies whose staff and/or contractors have expressed public interest in unionizing, including Spin, Instacart and Pittsburgh-based Google technical workers,

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Startup buys startup: PullRequest snags remote developer hiring platform Moonlight

PullRequest, a startup that provides code review as a service, announced today that it was buying Moonlight, an early-stage startup that has built an online platform for hiring remote developers. The companies did not share the terms.

Lyal Avery, founder and CEO at PullRequest, says he bought this company to expand his range of services. “Our p

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Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.

After having a good time with NEA’s Rick Yang last week, we thought we’d bring on another venture capitalist. So this week Danny and I had Elliott Robinson from Bessemer swing over for the show. As it turned out, he was

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Gojek reportedly buys 4.3% stake in Indonesian taxi company Blue Bird

Gojek has paid $30 million to take a minority stake in Blue Bird, one of the largest taxi operators in Indonesia, according to Bloomberg, which first reported that the deal was in progress last month.

Gojek’s stake in Blue Bird is worth $30 million. The taxi operator’s holding company disclosed in a regulatory filing earlier this month that it had

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On Monday, budget-lodging startup Oyo reported a loss of $335 million on $951 million revenue globally for the financial year ending March 31, 2019, and pledged to cut down on its spending as the India-headquartered firm grows cautious about its aggressive expansion.

The six-year-old startup’s growing revenue, up from $211 million in financial year

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Where top VCs are investing in construction robotics

Venture capital has been flooding the various subverticals under the robotics umbrella in recent years, and the construction space is one of the largest beneficiaries.

Last November, we surveyed 13 of the top robotics-focused VCs to find out which areas of robotics are exciting them most going into 2020. One of the most common areas of attention

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SumUp launches Mastercard-powered ‘SumUp Card& for business payments

SumUp, the London-based fintech company that enables small businesses to take card payments via its device and online, is launching its own pre-paid card in partnership with Mastercard.

Dubbed “SumUp Card,” the new offering will enable merchants to gain quicker to access funds collected via SumUp as it will no longer require money to be t

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The drunken HQ Trivia finale before it shut down was insane

“Not gonna lie. This f*cking sucks. This is the last HQ ever!” yelled host Matt Richards . And it just got crazier from there.The farewell game of HQ Trivia before it shut down last night was a beautiful disaster. The hosts cursed, sprayed champagne, threatened to defecate on the homes of trolls in the chat window, and begged for new jobs. Imagine

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Silja Litvin of eQuoo says founders should prioritize their mental health

Entrepreneurs — particularly tech entrepreneurs — face the uphill struggle of building something new in the world. Sometimes that struggle can exact a heavy mental toll. As much as everyone knows they should be sleeping, exercising and meditating, it’s hard to keep all that up when you are trying to build a company.

As an entrepreneur whose startup

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GGV Capital says mom-and-pop shops can boost e-commerce in emerging markets

Despite the rapid growth of e-commerce in India, Southeast Asia and other emerging markets, the vast majority of retail transactions there still happen offline in small stores that also serve as neighborhood hubs.

The central role these stores play in their communities led GGV Capital to develop what the firm refers to as its mom-and-pop shop

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HQ Trivia shuts down after acquisition falls through

HQ Trivia is dead. Today the company laid off its full staff of 25 and will cease operation of its trivia, sports and word guessing games, a source close to the company confirmed.

HQ Trivia had a deal in the works to be acquired, but the buyer pulled out yesterday and investors aren’t willing to fund it any longer, CEO and co-founder Rus Yusupov sa

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Tamatem, the games publisher for the MENA market, raises $3.5M to reach other ‘underserved& gamers

​Tamatem, the leading mobile games publisher in the Arabic speaking market, has raised $3.5 million in additional funding — essentially an extension of the startup’s earlier Series A.

The round was led by existing investor ​Wamda Capital, with participation from Modern Electronics Company (a subsidiary of AlFaisaliah Group) and North Base Media.

Tama

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