Startups

German startup Trade Republic is rolling out its app and service in France this week. This is a significant expansion move as Trade Republic has only been available in Germany and Austria so far. Trade Republic lets you buy and sell shares or exchange-traded funds (ETFs) from your phone with low, t

After enduring a day’s worth of taking a beating across social media, government and the various app stores of the mobile world, Robinhood took to its own blog and CEO’s Twitter account to explain why it had halted trading of some stocks earlier today. That Robinhood had restricted tr

An early Snapchat employee who once architected the “Our Stories” product, Chloë Drimal, has now launched her own social app, Yoni Circle. Described as a membership-based community, the app aims to connect womxn using storytelling — including through both live video chat sessions

Coinbase plans to go public by way of a direct listing, the company announced in a blog post today. The cryptocurrency exchange was founded in 2012 and allows users to buy and trade decentralized tokens like bitcoin and ethereum. The company has raised over $540 million in funding as a private comp

Cybersecurity startup CybSafe, a “behavioral security” platform, has raised $7.9 million in a Series A funding round led by IQ Capital with participation from Hanover Digital Investments (HDI) GmbH and B8 Ventures. The investment round will be used to focus on expanding its enterprise a

Storetasker is an online marketplace focused on connecting Shopify merchants with developers and other experts who can help grow their business. The product is now owned by the startup previously known as Lorem. Co-founder and COO Charlie Fogarty explained that while Lorem originally had a broader

Indian startup Shopalyst has officially launched a new platform that it calls the Discovery Commerce Cloud, which it says can help brands take full advantage of digital advertising. Co-founder and CEO Girish Ramachandra told me that Shopalyst was created to allow for “one seamless journey for

The venture potential of a startup that caters to individual students — instead of a slow-moving, small-pocketed institution — has a bullish aura that attracts investors. Add in a pandemic that forced many to embrace remote learning overnight, and it makes sense that we have seen companies lik

Buy now, pay later services — which let consumers finance the purchase of goods online by paying back the total in installments over time — have been growing in ubiquity this past year. Today, Scalapay, one of the companies that’s building a platform to enable buy now, pay later (

Update: Robinhood has made public note of the changes, stating that “in light of recent volatility” it is “restricting transactions for certain securities to position closing only, including $AMC, $BB, $BBBY, $EXPR, $GME, $KOSS, $NAKD and $NOK.” The company added that it has

Last night, Qualtrics priced its IPO at $30 per share, selling 50.4 million shares in the process. Notably, the company’s IPO price was harder to chase down than usual, with a formal press release in scarce supply. SEC filings indicate that the company “anticipate[s]” a price of $

While the pandemic has left some startups strapped for cash, the aptly-named Brazilian neobank Nubank is swimming in it. This morning, the company announced that it has raised a $400 million Series G round, putting their total funding to date at $1.2 billion. But even more remarkable, in addition

If the rise of direct-to-consumer businesses has been one of the big e-commerce trends of the last decade, then the growth of startups raising huge rounds to consolidate D2C players, to bring more economies of scale to the model, has definitely been a related theme of the past year. In the latest m

Catalyst Fund, a global accelerator managed by BFA Global, announced the 8th cohort for its Inclusive Fintech Program today. The accelerator runs the flagship program annually and with a focus on Kenya, Nigeria, South Africa, Mexico and India, selected startups receive £80,000 (~$100,000) in grant