DevOps market demand drives quick Series C turnaround for Esper

As DevOps SaaS platform Esper continues to build out the category and the number of connected devices grows, the company took on another round of funding to stay ahead of demand. Just five months after announcing a $30 million Series B round, the company is back with an even bigger capital infusion

Indian edtech giant Byju’s valued at $18 billion in new funding

Byju's has raised about $300 million as part of a larger round of new investment as the Indian edtech giant focuses on expanding its international business and aggressively explores merger and acquisition opportunities. A filing, supplied to technewss by research firm Tofler, showed that the n

Komunidad, a Philippines-based environmental intelligence platform, lands seed round

The Philippines is one of the most disaster-prone countries in the world, with geography that makes it vulnerable to typhoons, floods, volcanos, earthquakes and droughts. While working in IT, Felix Ayque began compiling cyclone reports and sending them as email alerts to communities. His work evolv

What a community means in the modern world of startups

“We believe that a thriving community is a company’s most valuable asset,” Community-led writes in its Declaration. “Community scales your business, resources and presence in ways that traditional marketing or advertising channels can’t. When done right, community enab

7 takeaways from Rivian's IPO filing

Rivian, the electric automaker backed by Amazon, Ford and a cornucopia of heavy-hitting institutional investors like T. Rowe Price Associates and Coatue, finally made its once-confidential IPO filing public. The company, which started in 2009 as Mainstream Motors before adopting the Rivian name two

Here's all 10 companies from IndieBio's latest New York cohort

Most big accelerators tend to dedicate some of their resources to dauntingly hard science problems and the companies taking them on… but for SOSV’s IndieBio, it’s the primary focus. Last time we checked in with IndieBio, their companies were working on everything from lozenges to

The first win: Getting early customers to take a chance with you

New companies face innumerable challenges around fine-tuning their product and constructing the appropriate revenue model. You may be looking ahead to raising some funds and trying to juggle the administrative aspects of running a business, but before all that, the purpose of your company is to sel

Reid Hoffman on the evolution of 'blitzscaling' amid the pandemic

When LinkedIn co-founder and Greylock partner Reid Hoffman first coined the term “blitzscaling,” he kept it simple: It's a concept that encourages entrepreneurs to prioritize speed over efficiency during a period of uncertainty. Years later, founders are navigating a pandemic, perha

How four-person startup Luminopia is using TV to treat lazy eye 

If you're diagnosed with lazy eye — otherwise known as amblyopia — as a child, there are only a few options at your disposal. You can wear an eye patch, you can take eye drops or you can wear corrective lenses. Or, in the future (pending FDA clearance), you could watch TV.  That

Vareto raises $24M from GV, Menlo and all-star angels to reinvent financial planning for enterprises

Vareto, a startup aiming to help companies conduct more forward-looking financial planning and analysis, is coming out of stealth today with $24 million in total funding. GV (formerly Google Ventures) led its $20 million Series A this year, and Menlo Ventures led its $4.2 million seed financing in

Utopia Labs is building an operating system for DAOs

Decentralized autonomous organizations, or DAOs, are all the rage at the moment. We're seeing explosive growth in this sector as people experiment with building companies on top of tokens and smart contracts. And where new organization types bloom, so does the need for infrastructure. Utopia La

LeadIQ’s rapid growth snags venture attention as sales software market stays hot

This morning LeadIQ, a startup working in the sales software market, announced that it has closed a $30 million Series B led by Cathay Innovation. Other investors in the transaction include Fresco Capital, Strong Ventures and Eight Road Ventures. LeadIQ frames its product from the perspective of mi

Battery chemistry company Sila’s founder Gene Berdichevsky on the science of scaling up

Before Gene Berdichevsky became the co-founder and CEO of battery chemistry company Sila Nano, he was the seventh employee at Tesla Motors. As principal engineer on the Roadster battery, Berdichevsky was one of the first people crazy enough to experiment with shoving a lithium-ion battery pack into

PSPDFkit raises $116M, its first outside money; now nearly 1B people use apps powered by its collaboration, signing and markup tools

An under-the-radar, bootstrapped startup from Vienna, Austria — a hit with developers for technology that underpins user experience for some of the world’s most popular apps — is doubling down on momentum and announcing its first outside investment, in the form of a large growth r