Our favorite startups from YC's Summer 21 Demo Day, Part 1

Y Combinator kicked off its fourth-ever virtual Demo Day today, revealing the first half of its nearly 400-company batch. The presentation, YC's biggest yet, offers a snapshot into where innovation is heading, from not-so-simple seaweed to a Clearco for creators. The technewss team stuck to it

Olsam raises $165M to buy up and scale consumer and B2B Amazon Marketplace sellers

"speakable-summary" dir="ltr">On the heels of Heroes announcing a $200 mlion raise earlier today, to double down on buying and scaling third-party Amazon Marketplace sellers, another startup out of London aiming to do the same is announcing some significant funding of its own. Olsam, a roll-up play

Tribe and Arkam back Jar app to help millions in India start their savings journey

Even as hundreds of millions of people in India have a bank account, only a tiny fraction of this population invests in any financial instrument. Fewer than 30 million people invest in mutual funds or stocks, for instance. In recent years, a handful of startups have made it easier for users —

Here are all the companies from Y Combinator's Summer 2021 Demo Day, Part 1

Today Y Combinator kicked off the Demo Day cycle for its Summer 2021 cohort. The collection of early-stage startups on day one-of-two alone numbered in the hundreds, meaning that we had to assemble a team here at technewss just to cover it all. But before we get into notes on each company that pre

Daily Crunch: Databricks reaches $38B billion valuation with $1.6B Series H

To get a roundup of technewss's biggest and most important stories delivered to your inbox every day at 3 p.m. PDT, subscribe here. Hello and welcome to Daily Crunch for August 31, 2021. Today the technewss machine was busy covering the first day of Y Combinator's Demo Day event, so expec

Yandex buys out Uber’s stake in Yandex Self-Driving Group, Eats, Lavka and Delivery for $1B

Russian internet and ride-hail giant Yandex has acquired Uber’s stake in its Self-Driving Group (SDG), as well as Uber’s indirect interest in Yandex.Eats, Yandex.Lavka and Yandex.Delivery. The total cost of the deal came to $1 billion, giving the Russian company 100% ownership over all

CryptoPunks creator inks representation deal with major Hollywood talent agency

One of Hollywood’s biggest talent agencies is getting into the NFT game. Larva Labs, the creator of CryptoPunks, just signed with United Talent Agency (UTA) in a representation deal that will bring one of the earliest and most iconic NFT projects into the entertainment and branding worlds.

LinkedIn is scrapping its Stories feature to work on short-form video

What do LinkedIn and Twitter have in common? They both introduced ephemeral story features that were pretty fleeting. LinkedIn announced today that it will suspend its Stories feature on September 30 and begin working on a different way to add short-form videos to the platform. LinkedIn announced t

Cheeterz Club wants to make reading glasses hip

Can reading glasses actually be cool? A new eyewear company called Cheeterz Club thinks so. The startup is working to change the perception of reading glasses from being just cheap, disposable items you pick up from a rotating display rack at your local drug store to being something you’d act

A popular smart home security system can be remotely disarmed, researchers say

A cybersecurity company says a popular smart home security system has a pair of vulnerabilities that can be exploited to disarm the system altogether. Rapid7 found the vulnerabilities in the Fortress S03, a home security system that relies on Wi-Fi to connect cameras, motion sensors and sirens to t

UK-based Heroes raises $200M to buy up more Amazon merchants for its roll-up play

Heroes, one of the new wave of startups aiming to build big e-commerce businesses by buying up smaller third-party merchants on Amazon’s Marketplace, has raised another big round of funding to double down on that strategy. The London startup has picked up $200 million, money that it will main

Whoop raises another $200M for its athlete-focused fitness wearable

Founded in 2012, Whoop is far from a household name in the world of fitness trackers. But over the years, the company has attracted its share of converts. It hasn't had any issue attracting venture capital over the years, either. Last time we checked in on the Boston-based company was in late-2

Challenger bank Bunq rolls out Spanish IBANs

Amsterdam-based challenger bank Bunq is updating its service with a handful of new features. In addition to Dutch, German and French bank account numbers, existing and new users in Spain can now get a Spanish IBAN. European IBANs are supposed to work across Europe. Your employer or internet provide

Tiger Global in talks to make Apna India’s fastest unicorn

Apna, a 21-month-old startup that is helping millions of blue- and gray-collar workers in India upskill themselves, find communities and land jobs, is inching closer to becoming the fastest tech firm in the world’s second-largest internet market to become a unicorn. Tiger Global is in advance