Venture

  MassMutual Ventures (MMV) has launched a $300 million new fund to back early-stage companies in Asia and Europe. The MMV Asia and Europe team's third vehicle will invest in startups across digital health, financial technology, enterprise SaaS and cybersecurity, managing d

Digital banking startup Cogni is joining the ranks of companies hopping on the crypto bandwagon. The mobile-based platform, founded in 2018 out of Barclays’ accelerator program (which is operated by Techstars), launched with the intent to offer personalized banking products suited to the life

Slow Ventures, a 12-year-old, generalist venture firm that’s headed up by former Facebook execs Kevin Colleran and Sam Lessin, along with Will Quist, formerly of Industry Ventures, says it just closed its fifth flagship seed-stage fund with $195 million in capital commitments and its second o

When we talk about early-stage startups, we tend to focus on the internals — and understandably so. It's easiest to home in on the things you can control: developing products, building a team, finding the right investors. All are important and foundational to developing a startup, of course.

Luke Hutchison didn't know exactly what he wanted to do as a graduate of West Point in 2013 — only that, ever since the 9/11 attack in New York, he wanted to serve his country. Certainly, he never imagined launching a private event management platform for restaurants and venues, but that&

To get a roundup of technewss's biggest and most important stories delivered to your inbox every day at 3 p.m. PT, subscribe here. On this fine day of April 21, 2022, we celebrate a shiny new podcast from our crypto team: Chain Reaction. Q: Why is the podcast so loud? A: Because it's immut

In mid-2020, short-term rental startup Lyric Hospitality shuttered most of its locations in what was widely viewed as another pandemic casualty. But the San Francisco company — which was out to help folks who struggled to decide between staying in a hotel or an Airbnb — wasn't ready

Signing into websites using your Google or Facebook account has become so commonplace that lots of people don’t think twice before doing it. Keeping control over one’s own identity on the internet often requires a substantial sacrifice of convenience, so plenty of users have accepted th

Four years ago, a nonprofit collective called Gold House was formed to advance the interests — and safety — of people of Asian and Pacific Islander descent in the U.S. Given the country’s long history of anti-Asian racism, it was overdue, argues Bing Chen, a former Google product

Aptly, Baukunst — named after the German word for “the art of building” — is looking to invest its freshly raised fund into founders who are “elevating the art of building.” The firm is leaning into its concept of “creative technologists,” which it de

For more than a year, Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) has quietly piloted its own take on an accelerator for early-stage entrepreneurs; today, its partners announced the program's official debut. In exchange for an unannounced percentage of ownership, a16z START offers early-stage founders up to $1

Welcome to my weekly fintech-focused column. I'll be publishing this every Sunday, so in between posts, be sure to listen to the Equity podcast and hear Alex Wilhelm, Natasha Mascarenhas and me riff on all things startups! And if you want to have this hit your inbox directly once it officia

To get a roundup of technewss's biggest and most important stories delivered to your inbox every day at 3 p.m. PT, subscribe here. Welcome to the Daily Crunch for Thursday, April 14, 2022! As we put this together, we are listening to TED's Chris Anderson interview with Elon

What if you could buy a Peloton with pre-tax dollars? How about vitamins and supplements? Skincare products? Or even mattresses and massages? All of those may likely qualify as purchases you could make through a Flexible Spending Account (FSA) or Health Savings Account (HSA). Both types of accounts