UrbanKisaan is betting on vertical farming to bring pesticide-free vegetables to consumers and fight India’s water crisis

Severe droughts have drained rivers and reservoirs across parts of India, and more than half a billion people in the world's second-most populous nation are estimated to run out of drinking water by 2030. Signs of this are apparent in farms, which consume the vast majority of total water suppli

Perigee infrastructure security solution from former NSA employee moves into public beta

Perigee founder Mollie Breen used to work for NSA where she built a security solution to help protect the agency’s critical infrastructure. She spent the last two years at Harvard Business School talking to Chief Information Security Officers (CISOs) and fine-tuning that idea she started at N

Forage, formerly InsideSherpa, raises $9.3 million Series A for virtual work experiences

Tech's coveted internships were some of the first roles to be cut as offices closed and businesses shuttered in response to the coronavirus. A number of companies across the country, including Glassdoor, StubHub, Funding Circle, Yelp, Checkr and even the National Institutes of Health, either pa

Facebook tries to clean up Groups with new policies

Facebook this morning announced a series of new rules designed to further penalize those who violate its community standards, specifically around Facebook Groups. It also introduced rules meant to crack down on the spread of misinformation through these more private networks. The changes will impac

Sophie Hill on the changing face of retail and surviving 2020

Threads is not your average startup and, really, it's not a startup anymore. It's over 10 years old, employs more than 150 people and successfully bridged the Series A gap in Europe closing a round of $20 million back in 2018. And so far, it's surviving 2020.  COVID-19 has put retail &

Contestants will compete for a SpaceX trip to the International Space Station in new reality TV show

There’s a reality TV competition show in the works that will feature a 2023 trip to the International Space Station as the grand prize, Deadline reports. The production company behind the show, which will be called “Space Hero,” has booked a seat on a SpaceX Dragon crew spacecraft

Demand Sage raises $3M to make sales and marketing data more accessible

Demand Sage, a new startup from the founders of recently acquired mobile analytics company Localytics, announced this morning that it has raised $3 million in seed funding led by Eniac Ventures and Underscore VC. When I spoke to CEO Raj Aggarwal, CTO Henry Cipolla and CPO Randy Dailey back in Febru

Polestar built a better car than Tesla; now it needs to build a better brand

Polestar is a startup in an unusual situation. Polestar has the car. It has the executives. Polestar has factories, partners and distribution channels. It’s set for success in a way most startups are not. And yet, success is not guaranteed. I fear Polestar is missing a critical aspect of elec

As the Western US burns, a forest carbon capture monitoring service nabs cash from Amazon & Bill Gates-backed fund

Pachama, the forest carbon sequestration monitoring service that tracks how much carbon dioxide is actually captured in forestry offset projects, has raised $5 million in fresh funding from a clutch of high-profile investors, including Amazon and Breakthrough Energy Ventures. The investment is one

TikTok rumors beg the question: Did Trump solve anything?

Over the past 24 hours, rumors picked up by Bloomberg, the Wall Street Journal and CNBC have put some boundaries on what a possible deal between Oracle and TikTok's parent company ByteDance will look like. In its current incarnation floating around the DC press corps, it appears that TikTok'

Caroline Brochado and Sophia Bendz on the boom in Europe’s early and growth-stage startups

As part of Disrupt 2020 we wanted to look at the contrasting positions of both early and later-stage investing in Europe. Who better to unpack this subject than two highly experienced operators in these fields? After a career at Spotify and then as a VC at Atomico, Sophia Bendz has rapidly gained a

Hulu tests its co-viewing feature ‘Watch Party’ with ad-supported viewers

Hulu was one of the first major streaming services to introduce a “co-viewing” feature that allows friends and family to watch Hulu content together from different locations. The feature, Hulu Watch Party, was initially only available for subscribers on the the ad-free tier of Hulu̵

Impact, a YC-style accelerator for the entertainment industry, spins out from Imagine Entertainment with backing from Benchmark

Hollywood has been better known for making films and TV shows about the tech industry than it has been for being a part of it, but today a new enterprise is launching, backed by a major Silicon Valley venture firm, that hopes to hit pause on that image. Imagine Impact, a content accelerator that la

Watch SpaceX launch 60 more Starlink satellites for its broadband internet service live

UPDATE: The launch has been scrubbed for today. SpaceX is evaluating whether to attempt tomorrow during its backup window, given weather conditions. SpaceX is set to launch the latest batch of its Starlink satellites on Thursday, with a target lift-off time of 2:19 PM EDT (11:19 AM PDT). The missio