StartUp

In an early-evening press conference, President Donald Trump tapped Vice President Mike Pence to lead the U.S. response to the COVID-19 outbreak that has spread through Europe, Asia and Latin America.

The new coronavirus strain, which has infected about 81,000 people around the world and killed 3,000, has already wrought havoc on the global

Hello and welcome back to our regular morning look at private companies, public markets and the gray space in between.Today we’re getting two items out of my notebook while sticking to our recent fintech theme (Q1 fintech VC results here and more on investing patterns into the category here). Let’s chat about fintech customer acquisition costs a

When it comes to the internet, content may be king, but in many cases, the emperor has no clothes. That is to say, the masses may click on interesting stories, video, music and other media, but building a lucrative business around that content can be a struggle, with advertising-based models often providing little in the way of margins except for

Made Renovation, a new, San Francisco-based company, thinks it has found a profitable way to help homeowners get done something that busy general contractors in the Bay Area won’t otherwise make time for, which is bathroom remodels.

Why they typically pass on these: they have too many entire homes, or, at least, entire floors, to build for affluent

Snapask, an on-demand tutoring app, announced today that it has raised $35 million in Series B funding. Earmarked for the startup’s expansion in Southeast Asia, the round was led by Asia Partners and Intervest.

Launched in Hong Kong five years ago, Snapask has now raised a total of $50 million and operates in Hong Kong, Taiwan, Malaysia,

It’s T-minus one week to the big day, March 3, when more than 1,000 startuppers will convene in Berkeley, Calif. for TC Sessions: Robotics + AI 2020. We’re talking a hefty cross-section representing big companies and exciting new startups. We’re talking some of the most innovative thinkers, makers, researchers, investors and influencers — all foc

Hasura, a startup working to solve developer problems around connecting to databases when using the open-source GraphQL tool, announced a $9.9 million Series A investment today.

Vertex Ventures US led the round, with participation from SAP.iO Fund and existing investors Nexus Venture Partners and Strive VC. A number of angel investors also

As much as we’d all like to believe that our houses are built with perfectly square angles and other highly regular measurements, that’s rarely the case — which makes remodeling complex and tedious. ShapeMeasure hopes to alleviate that pain with a device that automatically measures a space and a robotic mill that cuts the required lumber precisely

Tempo wants to be the Peloton of barbells. It’s a 42-inch tall screen with 3D machine vision that tracks and teaches you as you workout. The giant upright HD display makes it feel like your personal trainer is right there with you while you compete with others in live and on-demand classes.

Tempo’s Microsoft Kinect-esque motion sensors scan you 30 t

Welcome to the $100 million ARR club, BounceX.

This morning (evening, timezone depending), BounceX, a New York-based marketing technology startup, announced that it has reached the $100 million annual recurring revenue (ARR) threshold, adding its name to our running list of companies that have crossed over into nine-figure revenue while remaining

When it comes to the so-called “consumerization of the enterprise,” a workplace tool that looks an awful lot like Pinterest seems like it would be the trend’s final form. Brooklyn-based Air is building a digital asset manager for communications teams that aren’t satisfied with more general cloud storage options and want something that can show off

Jakarta-based entertainment company Visinema will build its animation business and expand into more Southeast Asian markets after raising a $3.25 million Series A led by Intudo Ventures. Returning investors GDP Ventures and Ancora Capital also participated.

Founded in June 2008 by CEO Angga Dwimas Sasongko, a director and producer, Visinema

The student loan crisis in the U.S. has left venture capitalists searching for novel approaches to financing higher education, but can the same systems designed for helping coders in Silicon Valley get jobs at Google help underserved students in developing countries become part of a global work force?

Similar to the buzzy San Francisco startup Lambd

Eagle-eyed readers will recall that we mentioned M1 Finance earlier today in our look at a few trends in the fintech industry. We’re back with the firm this afternoon as it has a bit of news that’s worth discussing.

Chicago-based M1 Finance announced today that it has reached the $1 billion assets under management mark, or AUM. Reaching AUM

Twilio is best known for its communications API, which allows developers to add messaging, voice or video to their apps with just a small slice of code. The company’s tools are used by customers like Lyft, Airbnb, Salesforce, Box and Duke University.

The former startup went public in 2016 at $15 a share. Yesterday Twilio’s stock closed at $113.90, g

It’s been a big news day for Salesforce . It announced that co-CEO Keith Block would be stepping down, and that it had acquired Vlocity for $1.33 billion in an all-cash deal.

It’s no coincidence that Salesforce targeted this startup. It’s a firm that builds six industry-specific CRMs on top of Salesforce — communications, media and entertainment, in

Cartesiam, a startup that aims to bring machine learning to edge devices powered by microcontrollers, has launched a new tool for developers who want an easier way to build services for these devices. The new NanoEdge AI Studio is the first IDE specifically designed for enabling machine learning and inferencing on Arm Cortex-M microcontrollers,

WordPress has become so ubiquitous, it’s easy to forget that it still drives a huge ecosystem of startups that build tools and services around the platform. One of these is Elementor, a graphical website building platform that you can plug into WordPress to design and publish sites. More than 4 million sites have already been built with the tool

Checkout.com, the quiet London-based payment platform, has acquired its first startup, ProcessOut. Checkout.com surprised everyone last year when it announced a gigantic $230 million Series A round. It turns out the payment processing boom is not over yet.

Checkout.com focuses on enterprise clients with customers all around the world. It provides a

TechCrunch has learned that $28 million-funded crypto startup Tagomi will be the newest member of the Libra Association that governs the Facebook-backed Libra stablecoin. A formal announcement is slated for Friday or next week.

Tagomi offers a platform that helps large traders and funds easily access cryptocurrency markets. The news comes days

Alkymi, an early-stage startup that wants to bring intelligence to highly manual business processes like copying and pasting financial data from emails and attachments, launched today with a $5 million seed investment.

Canaan Partners led the round with participation from previous investor Work-Bench. SimCorp also contributed as a strategic

Silicon Valley air purifier startup Molekule was born out of an idea Dr. Yogi Goswami had back in the ’90s using photo-voltaic technology to kill air pollutants. His son, a young boy at the time, suffered from severe allergies and Dr. Goswami wanted to build something those like him could use in their home to clear the air. But the sleekly d

One of the biggest roadblocks to reducing costs in the American healthcare system is the system’s inherent lack of transparency.

Most healthcare networks and hospital systems can’t even accurately account for the doctors they manage and which insurance plans those doctors accept — let alone how good those doctors actually are at providing care, acc

Tier Mobility operates a scooter service, the kick-scooter-with-a-motor kind. And it has acquired assets from Coup, a now-defunct scooter service, the moped kind. Coup shut down late last year, and Tier Mobility plans to take over and start its own shared moped service.

To be clear, Coup is over, but its mopeds will stick around. As part of the

French startup Cityscoot is raising a $25.6 million (€23.6 million) funding round from Allianz France, Demeter as well as existing investors Groupe RATP and Banque des Territoires. The startup is also raising at least $6.5 million (€6 million) in debt in order to finance its service.

Cityscoot is a free-floating electric scooter service (moped

This morning, Y Combinator is publishing a 70-page Series A guide based on its work with 190 YC companies over the last couple of years. It’s part of an initiative launched in 2018 to help these alums understand how Series A rounds work — and how to make them work to their advantage.

The program is led by YC partner Aaron Harris, with whom we talke

B-Social, the London-based fintech building what it calls a “social bank,” is announcing that it has raised a further £7.8 million in seed funding.

Once again the injection of capital comes from “high-net-worth” individuals. They include Rudy Karsan from Karlani Capital, although most of the investors remain undisclosed.

It brings the total capital

Recapped. Layoffs. Slowdown. CEO transition. Budget cuts. Downsizing.

In spite of a spate of massive startup exits the last few months, culminating in fintech’s shining moment yesterday with Intuit’s $7.1 billion acquisition of Credit Karma, it’s been a tough period for the startup world. Layoffs abound, centered perhaps on SoftBank’s Vision Fund p