What can happen when mortgage lenders become VCs
It’s difficult for tech workers and it’s even more difficult for those not touched by the modern gold rush. One mortgage originator, Opes Advisors, is incorporating restricted stock units (RSU) and private shares to make it easier for techies to move from incubator to nest egg. But what appears helpful to a population that sees housing prices moving out of reach could actually… Read MoreIn-app marketing startup Insert raises $10M
Insert is the new startup from the team behind app development company Worklight (which was acquired by IBM for $70 million). Today it’s announcing that it has raised $10 million in Series A funding. Insert CEO Shahar Kaminitz said that where Worklight (where he was founder and former CEO) was focused on “the core development of the application,” he’s come to realize… Read MoreBurrow wants to bring Casper’s mattress concept to couches
Buying a couch sucks. Not unlike when buying a mattress, most people find themselves picking one of two* options: heading to a chain couch store and haggling with someone who needs to keep the price up for the sake of commissions, or saying “screw that” and heading for IKEA. Then you’ve gotta deal with getting the thing to — and in — your house. (* or, of… Read MoreGrubMarket raises $20 million to expand its online farmer’s market
Forget food delivery. Just the organic slice of the grocery delivery business remains competitive in the U.S. with giants from the brick and mortar world, tech titans and upstarts all muscling in for a piece of an annual market that sees more than $40 billion in sales domestically. Some have flamed out, like Farmigo, which recently closed shop. And others done some belt-tightening, like… Read More- CRUNCH NETWORK
Demystifying the concept of ‘attribution’ in digital marketing
Most of my analogies revolve around sports. The concept of “attribution” in business is similar to giving credit to a player for assisting another player in achieving an objective. The purpose of this post is to explain the analogous concept of multi-channel attribution in digital marketing: That is, which channels should get rewarded when a user clicks through to buy something. Read More Elation Health receives $15M to take another crack at electronic health records
Kyna and Conan Fong were at dinner trying to convince their father, who ran a medical practice, to try something different than just keeping paper records. There’s a good reason for that — they’re slow, they’re hard to transfer and share (often requiring paper delivery or faxes), and there’s a lot of information that can be lost along the way. But despite that being… Read MoreBrandYourself raises $2M to monitor and improve your online reputation
Reputation management startup BrandYourself has raised another $2 million. It’s been two years since the company raised $3.3 million in Series A funding. Since then, co-founder and CEO Patrick Ambron said BrandYourself has grown to an 80-person team, and it’s become profitable. (Ambron also pitched BrandYourself on Shark Tank last year, though he ended up turning down funding… Read MoreNetwork analytics startup Kentik pulls in $23M Series B
In a beacon of hope for onlooking founders, Y Combinator reject and network analytics startup Kentik Technologies locked down a $23 million Series B this morning. Let’s be honest — most of us don’t know anything about network infrastructure. Fortunately for most of us, we can afford not to know. For internet service providers and companies making use of a large number of… Read More
Homebase raises $6 million to make hourly work easier to manage for local businesses
From rising rents to online competitors, local stores and restaurants face enough challenges outside of their own doors that basic stuff like scheduling employees’ shifts and breaks should feel easy. But that process is still, too often, a mess of paperwork and data entry. A startup called Homebase has raised $6 million to make hourly work much easier to manage for every business on… Read MoreDrizly pulls in $15 million Series B to power liquor-based e-commerce
Drizly, the on-demand booze delivery startup, has today announced the close of a $15 million Series B funding round, led by Polaris Partners, with participation from other existing investors. Drizly operates in a very similar manner to Uber, providing the technology infrastructure that allows liquor retailers the opportunity to provide their own on-demand service, as well as an e-commerce… Read Moreinploi is another jobs app that wants to kill off the service industry CV
Walking around the neighborhood handing out CVs in the hopes of scoring shifts in a local cafe or restaurant has never been an efficient job-search process. But workers in the service industry still do it. London-based startup inploi is hoping to change that — it’s gunning to replace the paper CV with a mobile profile and location-based jobs platform. Read MoreSplice launches rent-to-own pricing model for software synths
One by one, most software has succumbed to the cloud; Designers have Adobe, gamers have Steam, programmers have GitHub and now musicians have Splice. Splice is launching a rent-to-own pricing model for software synths. Starting today, musicians will be able to use Serum from Xfer Records, to their hearts content without any upfront fees. The company likes to call their service a rental… Read MoreAccompany’s digital chief-of-staff application launches in beta
Many executives and employees have need for a role that’s basically a “chief of staff” — someone who keeps track of all the details about everyone they encounter and are headed off to meet in their professional careers. But there’s plenty of information that they might be missing out on, and as you head downstream to smaller companies those roles are just as… Read MoreDropbox launches an iPhone and Android version of its document-editing app Paper
It’s an interesting time for Dropbox’s document-building tool, Paper. Quip, in a similar vein to Paper, was bought for a whopping $750 million by Salesforce earlier this week. This deal surprised a ton of people, but made a lot of sense given that Salesforce has seemingly been dipping its toes into collaboration software. So Quip is a great, and natural, fit for Salesforce and… Read MoreRipple acquires Hoodline, bringing two local news startups together
Ripple has acquired Hoodline, a deal that combines two different approaches to covering local news. Founded by former Viki CEO Razmig Hovaghimian, Ripple launched earlier this year and taps community contributors for its coverage. Hoodline, meanwhile, has an editorial team (led by TechCrunch’s former co-editor Eric Eldon) taking advantage of local data to cover neighborhood news. Read MorePowerplant Ventures closes $42 million fund to back “plant-centric” food and tech startups
In recent years, venture capital has poured into food companies, from meal kit and grocery delivery services to the makers of environmentally sustainable, or health-promoting food products. Now, investors and entrepreneurs from tech, food and the restaurant industry have launched a firm, and closed a $42 million debut fund called Powerplant Ventures, to invest specifically in… Read MoreFlorence Healthcare raises $1.7 million to move clinical trials research off paper, into the cloud
An Altanta-based startup called Florence Healthcare has raised $1.7 million in seed funding to help drug companies and researchers at hospitals or other trial sites to exchange information about clinical trials in the cloud. Ultimately, helping these groups share information with each other, and with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, could speed up the time it takes to get much-needed… Read MoreLondon-based City Pantry picks up £1.1M to grow office catering marketplace
London-based City Pantry, which operates an office catering platform to make it easier to order in food for staff and company meetings, has raised £1.1 million in new funding. The investment comes from Angel Co Fund, and The London Co Investment fund (both of which are part-funded by tax-payer money), and various angels and existing investors. Read More
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