Startups

Kaleido, makers of a drag-and-drop background removal service for images and video, have been acquired by up-and-coming digital design platform Canva. While the price and terms are not disclosed, it is speculated that this young company may have fetched nearly nine figures. It’s the right pro

This morning MealMe.ai, a food search engine, announced that it has closed a $900,000 pre-seed round. Palm Drive Capital led the round, with participation from Slow Ventures and CP Ventures. technewss first became familiar with MealMe when it presented as part of the Techstars Atlanta demo day las

Employers today often use perks to attract new talent in the form of discounts and deals, commuter funds, gym memberships, child care, free lunches and more. But the pandemic has impacted what sort of in-office or other in-person perks employees can access. That’s led to booming growth —

We love nothing more than highlighting notable early-stage startups, and you'll find plenty of them in the spotlight on March 3 at TC Sessions: Justice 2021, a virtual conference exploring diversity, inclusion and the human labor that powers tech. You do not want to miss meeting and learning mo

Virtual events platform Hopin is hopin' for a mega valuation. According to multiple sources who spoke with technewss, the company, which was founded in mid-2019, is running around the fundraise circuit and perhaps nearing the end of a fundraise in which it is looking to raise roughly $400 mill

Big morning for Massachusetts tech companies planning to go public via SPAC. Shortly after Berkshire Grey unveiled its intentions, Watertown-based Markforged has announced its own plans. The metal 3D printing company intends to merge with ONE, a special purpose acquisition company created by Kevin

After making pre-seed investments for seven years, I have observed how different the pre-seed stage is from Series A and later-stage investing. Today, I want to highlight four ideas that are true across different stages of investing. Venture outcomes are driven by a power law Power law is an immuta

Additive manufacturing has been a popular buzz phrase for decades now. With a smattering of notable exceptions, however, 3D printing has largely been focused on rapid prototyping and limited-run, personal products. Metal 3D printing companies like Mantle represent an intriguing use case on the road

Harbor, an app that gamifies emergency preparedness, has today announced the launch of a premium tier that includes features like an emergency button called HarborHELP that it has built in partnership with home-security company ADT. The premium subscription also includes a family plan, which lets p

As far as fundraising goes, Berkshire Grey is in pretty good shape. When I visited its Massachusetts headquarters last year, following a massive $263 million Series B, the company discussed some pretty aggressive growth plans. Mind you, that was before the pandemic had really touched down in the U.

As energy grids transition away from fossil fuels and toward the use of zero emission sources of power from primarily renewable energy sources, they’re going to need an ability to store and then use the massive amounts of energy that’s only generated intermittently by the sun and wind.

Many founders talk about their desire for a more diverse investor base. Richie Serna took that desire and made it a reality. Serna, who founded payments infrastructure startup Finix in 2016, had raised more than $95 million in venture funding from the likes of Lightspeed Venture Partners, American

It's almost too simple. You get a tablet made of household chemicals that can be dissolved in water which can become a cleaning spray for the kitchen, glass and bathroom, with no need to ship the water it is dissolved into because it literally comes out of your tap. That was the premise of Muni

Knowledge workers — those whose professions tend to be anchored to desks or computers — have long been the most obvious and primary focus for a lot of B2B apps and services. But as the wider world migrates to doing more and more on smartphones and other connected devices, the opportunit