Startups

This morning Root Insurance, a neoinsurance provider that has attracted ample private capital for its auto-insurance business, is targeting a valuation of as much as $6.34 billion in its pending IPO. The former startup follows insurtech leader Lemonade to the public markets during a year in which I

Meadow was once called the Amazon of weed. Now it’s trying to be the Salesforce of weed, too. Meadow, the maker of a popular point-of-sale system for cannabis dispensaries, is today launching new tools for its clients. Called the Meadow Platform, it includes two key tools for dispensaries: a

Remember Netscape Navigator and Internet Explorer? Those applications from the 1990s used emphatic metaphors in their names to talk about a simple task — browsing the web. Today, nobody would say that Google Chrome is a web explorer. Browsing the web has become an effortless — and often mindles

Sym, a new platform that makes it easier for developers to integrate security and privacy workflows into their process, today announced that it has raised a $9 million Series A round led by Amplify Partners. Earlier this year, the company announced its $3 million seed round lead by Andy McLoughlin

Today at 2 p.m. EDT/11 a.m. PDT, Unusual Ventures’ Sarah Leary and John Vrionis are joining us over at the Extra Crunch Live stage! The Unusual Ventures team has investments spanning the consumer and enterprise space, including Robinhood, AppDynamics, Mulesoft, Winnie and more. That short lis

Security testing company NSS Labs “ceased operations” last week, the company said in a notice on its website, citing impacts related to the ongoing coronavirus pandemic. The Austin, Texas-based company was quietly acquired by private equity firm Consecutive last October. But last week,

The public sector usually publishes its business opportunities in the form of “tenders,” to increase transparency to the public. However, this data is scattered, and larger businesses have access to more information, giving them opportunities to grab contracts before official tenders ar

The web of collaboration apps invading remote work toolkits have led to plenty of messy workflows for teams that communicate in a language of desktop screenshots and DMs. Tracing a suggestion or flagging a bug in a company’s website forces engineers or designers to make sense of the mess them

Housing prices have soared in many markets across the United States over the past decades as populations have grown, square footage has increased, and new unit construction has languished. Houses that were once tens of thousands of dollars have transformed due to zoning restrictions into million-do

Usually, databases about companies have to be painstakingly updated by humans. Soleadify is a startup that uses machine learning to create profiles for businesses in any industry. The first of the company’s products is a business search engine that keeps over 40 million business profiles upda

College graduates this year (and perhaps in the near-term) have been looking for work in what is one of the most challenging job markets in a decade due to the coronavirus and its impacts on the economy and how people can interact with each other. Today, a startup that’s helping them with tha

Before Nick Macario launched Verifiable, the Austin-based company that just raised $3 million for its API toolkit that verifies healthcare credentials, he ran a series of other businesses designed to offer public credentials for professionals. His first foray into the world of identity management s

Vectary, a design platform for 3D and augmented reality (AR), has raised a $7.3 million round led by European fund EQT Ventures. Existing investor BlueYard (Berlin) also participated. Vectary makes high-quality 3D design more accessible for consumers, garnering over one million creators worldwide,

While Amazon gradually builds out its own-branded line of products, third-party sellers continue to account for a significant part of the transaction volume and growth on its marketplace — by one estimate, accounting for $200 billion of the $335 billion in gross merchandise value sold on Amaz