On-demand sales force Universal Avenue closes $10M Series A
Universal Avenue, the Stockholm-headquartered startup that lets companies access a local sales force on demand, has closed a deal of its own. The company has raised $10 million in fresh Series A funding, adding to the $5 million “extension” to its seed round a little under a year ago and bringing total funding to $17 million. Read MoreCan the Airbnb regulatory nightmare be solved with more tech?
Sharing economy startups like Airbnb and Uber have gone nuclear to defend their business model, suing city governments or shuttering their services entirely when they don’t get their way. Airbnb recently sued the City of San Francisco over legislation that would require Airbnb to boot hosts off its platform if they don’t register with the city. Uber and Lyft haven’t had… Read MoreWalt Disney Co. reveals 9 new startups in the Disney Accelerator spanning robotics, cinematic VR and AI
The Walt Disney Co. is kicking off the third session of its corporate accelerator this week, and revealed 9 new companies admitted to the program. A full list follows at the end of this post. The companies are developing everything from cinematic virtual reality and holographic content, to robots with human-like facial expressions. Because alumni of the Disney Accelerator have scored big… Read MoreYoshi launches “set it and forget it” vehicle re-fueling service in San Francisco
A startup called Yoshi Inc. is the latest to give drivers a way to fuel up without going to the gas station. The company has officially launched its gas delivery service in the San Francisco Bay Area, and is offering other simple services like filling up the air in a car’s tires, replacing windshield wiper blades and washing cars, as well. Sound familiar? Yoshi is not the only company… Read MoreRevolut grabs $10 million for its mobile foreign exchange service
British startup Revolut wants to make it easier to spend and send money in all kinds of currencies around the world. It’s not TransferWise, it’s not Number26 — Revolut sits between all these things. And the company is raising a $10 million Series A (£7.75 million) with Balderton Capital leading the round. Read More3Scan raises $14 million for a robotic microscope that could accelerate drug discovery
Robots and software aren’t just changing manual labor in warehouses or kitchens. They’re also transforming medical research. A San Francisco startup called 3Scan Inc. raised $14 million in venture funding to automate tissue analysis for scientists involved in drug discovery with its proprietary robotic microscope and computer vision systems. According to the company’s… Read MoreMolotov is now available in France with a freemium model
French startup Molotov has been working on redefining the way we watch video content for a few years now. But after a long period in stealth, it’s time to open the service once and for all. I’m not going to write another product review. I’ve been using Molotov for months already on my Apple TV, iPad and laptop. It’s by far the best Apple TV app I’ve ever used. Read MoreOMG Digital is basically BuzzFeed for Africa
OMG Digital, a West Africa-based startup founded by Prince Boakye Boampong and Jesse Arhin Ghansah, is on a mission to bring relatable content to African millennials. The two are currently participating in Silicon Valley accelerator Y Combinator, with the hopes of becoming the BuzzFeed for Africa, or, a media site known for highly shareable content. OMG Digital launched its entertainment… Read More- CRUNCH NETWORK
Insurance is ready for an upgrade
Insurance may be widely perceived as a sleepy backwater when it comes to innovation in technology, but that’s about to change. Whether the transformations to come — which we expect to impact the industry on a number of different fronts — end up bolstering a particular insurer’s future or undermining it depends on whether they seize the opportunity to reinvent their… Read More
Deleted Tweet archive PostGhost shut down after Twitter cease and desist
PostGhost was a nascent website that archived the tweets of the famous, rich, and important. The site got popular for finding and storing the deleted Tweets of politicians and even Lindsay Lohan who plead with the English PM to #remain. “We created the website postghost.com to provide the public with a more accurate history of public statements made by the most influential public figures… Read MoreInside the ape cage with Antonio Garcia Martinez, author of Chaos Monkeys
If you’re in a startup or even plan to sue one, Chaos Monkeys is the book to read. Antonio Garcia Martinez is a former physics major turned Wall Street quant turned startupper and he’s an amazing writer, able to encapsulate in a few words an era of greed, avarice, and ridiculous button-down-shirt/sweater vest combos. The world in which Garcia Martinez operated wasn’t pretty. Read More- CRUNCH NETWORK
The two best pieces of early-stage pitching advice
Over the past 10 years I’ve been on the first cap tables of three startups for which I’ve been responsible for closing their capital-raising efforts. I’ve raised money from the smallest angel investor to the biggest European VC funds and some of the world’s largest corporate investors. My present role has me on the other side of the table, assessing the pitches of… Read More Austria: The up-and-coming early-stage investment capital of Europe
To many, Austria can seem like a country of the past, one whose very charm lies in the fact that its best days are behind it. The Austro-Hungarian Empire collapsed almost 100 years ago, and, with it, the aspirations this landlocked, Central European nation of 8.5 million had to control the global stage. Perhaps that’s why the Austrian startup scene has been so easy to overlook. Read MoreDIY Co. launches JAM to help kids learn what they don’t in school, with a little help from Cartoon Network
DIY Co., the education tech startup led by Vimeo designer and co-founder Zach Klein, has launched a new online learning platform for kids called JAM.com. The company also quietly closed a $4 million round of venture funding led by Learn Capital, joined by Spark Capital, at the end of 2015 to support the development of JAM, Klein told TechCrunch. Courses on DIY’s new site JAM were… Read MoreThe Athletic is bringing subscription-based local sports coverage to a city near you
High-quality local sports coverage isn’t dead. At least that’s the premise upon which The Athletic is building its business. The young startup, part of Y Combinator’s Summer 2016 class, is trying to reinvent local sports media – an industry that has been on the decline ever since newspapers realized that advertising revenue wouldn’t be enough to support a team… Read MoreHer, the dating app for queer women, finally goes live on Android
And so, the dating pool for queer women across the world got that much bigger. Her, the dating app focused exclusively on ladies who are into other ladies, has finally opened up the app to Android users. The app launched all the way back in 2013 in the UK, and back then it was known as “Dattch.” Since, the app has rebranded to Her and launched across the United States, with… Read MoreIntegral Ad Science acquires bot detection company Swarm
Integral Ad Science is unveiling some new steps to combat ad fraudsters, including the acquisition of a bot detection company called Swarm. CEO Scott Knoll told me that he was particularly interested in Swarm’s technology for side channel analysis, a technique for examining a web browser to identify whether or not it’s a bot. That’s an area where Integral Ad Science has… Read MoreSurf Air is expanding its “all-you-can-fly” service to Europe
Surf Air, the travel startup that offers “all you can fly” service to paying members, will begin running routes in Europe this October, the company announced today. Specifically, Surf Air’s European routes will include multiple daily flights between UK’s London Luton Airport, and other business hubs like Cannes, Geneva and Zurich. The company also intends to offer… Read MoreNew reports confirm $1.15B leveraged loan raised by Uber at 5%
Two weeks ago, we reported that Uber was in talks to raise $1-2 billion in leveraged loans. The Wall Street Journal is circulating new information that the company has closed a $1.15 billion leveraged loan, with a 5 percent yield. This number comes in on the low side of our previous estimates. Last month, sources confirmed to TechCrunch that Uber had plans to raise $1-2 billion in… Read MoreDrupe reimagines the address book with $3 million in funding
The mobile phone has transformed quite a bit in the last ten years, but the heart of it — the address book — hasn’t changed much. Drupe, with brand new funding, is looking to accelerate the evolution of the Phone Book. The company today announced $3 million in new funding from Canaan Partners Israel and Sweet Capital, a fund that was spun up by the founders of Candy Crush… Read More
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