Startups

Aydin Senkut is a Swiss Army knife of an investor. He has been on the Midas List for the past seven years, with early investments in companies like Shopify, Rovio, Fitbit, Ayden, Credit Karma, SoundHound and more. One such investment is Guideline, an enterprise tech company focused on giving small

DesignCrowd announced today it has raised $10 million AUD (about $7.6 billion USD) in pre-IPO funding. The capital will be used on hiring and product development, with the goal of accelerating the growth of BrandCrowd, its DIY platform. The new funding comes as DesignCrowd gets ready for a potentia

In 2018, Carbon, a Nigerian fintech startup, made its financials public for the first time. Although typical for foreign private startups, it’s almost an anomaly in Africa. There have been rare cases in the past, for instance, when Rocket Internet had to include Jumia’s financials in it

New space startup bluShift wants to bring a new kind of propellant to the small satellite launching market, with rockets powered by bio-derived rocket fuels. These differ from traditional fuels in that they offer safety advantages during handling, and ecological advantages during production and use

Speaking is one of the hardest parts of learning a new language, especially if you don't have someone to practice with regularly. ELSA is an app that helps by using speech recognition technology to correct pronunciation. Based in San Francisco and Ho Chi Minh City, ELSA announced today it has r

Ben, a London-based employee benefits and rewards platform, has raised $2.5 million in funding. The seed round is led by Cherry Ventures, and Seedcamp. A number of angel investors with backgrounds in fintech and HR tech also participated. They include Paul Forster (founder of Indeed), Taavet Hinrik

Where can new founders and budding entrepreneurs turn for expert advice to navigate the formative phases of building a startup? Head to technewss Early Stage — a two-day virtual bootcamp that gives early founders (pre-seed through Series A) access to the leading experts across a range of essenti

As a 20-year CIO and advisor to multiple startups, I sat on many customer advisory boards (CABs) and saw how they were formed. Some companies have highly functioning CABs, others merely serve as feedback loops. Any startup striving to connect directly with their customers would benefit from establi

In June of 1999, Sequoia Capital and Kleiner Perkins invested $25 million into an early-stage company developing a new search engine called Google, paving the way for a revolution in how knowledge online was organized and shared. Now, Sequoia Capital is placing another bet on a different kind of se

A gig economy-powered consumer edtech platform is heading to the New York Stock Exchange. Edtech startup Nerdy, which owns the popular tutoring business Varsity Tutors, is seeking to become a public company through a special purpose acquisition vehicle, otherwise known as a SPAC. Ne

After a turbulent week for the stock market and halts to the trading of certain speculative securities including GameStop (GME) and AMC, consumer investing app Robinhood has raised new capital. The new funds total more than $1 billion, with the company telling technewss that they were raised from

Uber’s plan to acquire Autocab, a maker of SaaS for booking and dispatch software for the taxi and private-hire vehicle industry, which also operates a global trip marketplace for taxis and PHVs (iGo), is being looked at by the U.K.’s competition watchdog — which announced the lau

Sirenum, a platform for remotely managing a shift-based workforce across industries such as railway, aviation, construction and the gig economy, has raised a $2.7 million Series A funding round from new investors, including former Tesco CEO Sir Terry Leahy, alongside the William Currie Group. Siren

French startup Chefclub announced earlier this week that it has raised a $17 million funding round led by First Bridge Ventures. SEB Alliance, the venture arm of kitchen appliance maker Groupe SEB, Korelya Capital and Algaé Ventures are also participating. Chefclub has been building a major media