BigBrain aims to bring live mobile trivia back to glory

If you ask Nik Bonaddio why he wanted to build a new mobile trivia app, his answer is simple. “In my life, I’ve got very few true passions: I love trivia and I love sports,” Bonaddio told me. “I’ve already started a sports company, so I’ve got to start a trivia c

Metafy adds $5.5M to its seed round as the market for games coaching grows

This morning Metafy, a distributed startup building a marketplace to match gamers with instructors, announced that it has closed an additional $5.5 million to its $3.15 million seed round. Call it a seed-2, seed-extension or merely a baby Series A; Forerunner Ventures, DCM and Seven Seven Six led t

Valence unveils training program to help build pipeline of Black execs

Diversity has been linked with equity and inclusion because diversity is just one part of the equation when it comes to hiring Black employees. How do the companies they work for make people feel welcome and included, rather than isolated? How do Black employees find their way into management, up t

Turkey’s Ace Games raises $7M to develop casual and ‘hyper casual’ games

Ace Games, a Turkish mobile gaming company founded by a former Peak Games co-founder, has raised a $7 million seed funding round led by Actera Group. Co-investment has come from San Francisco's NFX. Former gaming entrepreneurs Kristian Segerstrale, Alexis Bonte and Kaan Gunay also participated.

Figure raises $7.5M to help startup employees better understand their compensation

The topic of compensation has historically been a delicate one that has left many people — especially startup employees — wondering just what drives what can feel like random decisions around pay and equity. Last June, software engineers (and housemates) Miles Hobby and Geoffrey Tissera

Diginex launches ESG reporting platform aimed at small businesses

As ESG reporting goes up the agenda for large companies, it's also increasingly doing so for smaller companies as well. But right now, tracking things like your company's CO2 emissions is mainly the preserve of large corporations. Now a startup hopes to address this. Diginex Solutions has a

Expressable launches with millions for scalable speech therapy

Speaking isn't simple for at least 40 million Americans, so a new Austin-based startup is scaling a solution. Expressable is a digital speech therapy company that connects patients to speech-language pathologists (SLP) via telehealth services and asynchronous support, and it has raised a new $4

Look out Pied Piper — iSIZE reduces power for video streaming, raises $6.3M in round led by Octopus

It's widely known that video streaming boomed during the pandemic, as millions of people were faced by boredom during lockdowns. But an unintended consequence of this was the growing environmental impact of millions of video streams, which meant server farms needing to draw increasing amounts o

Kahoot acquires Clever, the US-based edtech portal, for up to $500M

Kahoot, the popular Oslo-based edtech company that has built a big business out of gamifiying education and creating a platform for users to build their own learning games, is making an acquisition to double down on K-12 education and its opportunities to grow in the U.S. It is acquiring Clever, a

Una Brands launches with $40M to roll up brands on multiple Asia-Pacific e-commerce platforms

"attachment_2147780" aria-describedby="" style="width: 1024px">Una Brands’ co-founders (from left to right): Tobias Heusch, Kiren Tanna and Kushal Patel. Image Credits: Una Brands One of the biggest funding trends of the past year is companies that consolidate small e-commerce brands. Many of

Applications for the TC Early Stage Pitch-Off in July are open

Early-stage startups — now is your time to shine at the technewss Early Stage event on July 8 and 9. This is part two of the highly successful event from April where top experts train and teach founders how to build, launch and scale their companies. In April we hosted the inaugural TC Earl

Beyond the fanfare and SEC warnings, SPACs are here to stay

The number of SPACs in the deep tech sector was skyrocketing, but a combination of increased SEC scrutiny and market forces over the past few weeks has slowed the pace of new SPAC transactions. The correction is an inevitable step on the path to mainstreaming SPACs as an alternative to IPOs, but it

How to make sure your legal team is M&A ready

When it comes to acquiring or merging a business with another, it's imperative that decision-makers know why they're pursuing a deal and its potential impact on the company, good and bad. Mergers and acquisitions (M&A) may indeed be the best route to success, but there's a lot of ro

Text Blaze raises $3.3M for its speed-writing automation service

Text Blaze, which was a part of the recent Winter 2021 Y Combinator accelerator batch, announced that it has closed a $3.3 million seed round. The company’s investment was led by Two Sigma Ventures’s Villi Iltchev and Susa Ventures’s Leo Polovets. The company’s product hybri