YC-Backed New Story Crowdfunds Houses For Homeless Families
New Story is a startup in Y Combinator’s current batch that raises funds to build homes for those who lost theirs due to a natural disaster, starting with Haiti. Co-founder Brett Hagler got the idea during a volunteer trip to help those hit by the 2010 earthquake that left thousands of Haitians without homes. Read MoreHelloFresh Is Delivering 4 Million Meals Per Month
HelloFresh has just shared that it is now selling 4 million meals per month. The company says that this is more than the company sold in the entire first half of 2014 combined. HelloFresh is a food delivery service that competes directly with Blue Apron and Plated, delivering pre-portioned and planned meals at your door each week for you to cook. The space is so hot right now, with Blue… Read MoreThis Week On The TechCrunch Gadgets Podcast: Verizon On The Horizon
Can you hear me now? Hopefully you can after a month of silence out of the TC Gadgets Podcast team. But freshly acquired by Verizon, we’re back and ready to chat. The deal, which is still subject to regulatory approval, is valued at $4.4 billion. I don’t want to ruin the surprise of the podcast, so I’ll just ask you to direct your attention to the player below. Check out… Read MoreShuffle’s New iPhone App Lets You Create Disposable Phone Numbers…And Emails, Too
A new mobile app called Shuffle has launched a simple utility that lets you create additional, disposable phone numbers you can use to call or text as well as receive voicemail through, right from your iPhone. The app is a competitor to longtime favorite Burner, which has, for some time, offered similar functionality. But Shuffle takes things a step further, by also allowing you… Read MoreDecorist Raises $4.5M To Bring Customers Affordable Design Advice And Room Makeovers
Design startup Decorist has raised $4.5 million in seed funding from home improve giant Lowe’s Companies, the Women’s Venture Capital Fund and undisclosed angel investors. The big player in the market is probably Houzz, which allows users to find home design ideas and hire architects, designers and others who can actually make those ideas a reality. The Decorist approach is a… Read MoreTynker, A Startup That Teaches Kids To Code, Now Works With Robots, Drones And More
Tynker, a startup that teaches children the fundamentals of programming by having them build their own games, is now expanding its platform to allow kids to control connected devices, including drones, robots and other “smart home” products, like lighting systems. The company will introduce these capabilities this weekend at the Bay Area Maker Faire in San Mateo, and the… Read MoreLyft Raises An Additional $150M, Including $100M From Carl Icahn
It may not have the mega-valuation of rival Uber, but ridesharing startup Lyft’s new $150 million extension to its $530 million round from March certainly puts it in the upper stratosphere of startups in terms of perceived value. The new $150 million extension is led by Carl C. Icahn’s Icahn Enterprises, which put up $100 million of the total. It’s an unusual move by Icahn… Read MoreBengaluru Food Delivery Startup Dazo Helps Hungry Customers Figure Out What To Order Fast
Most food delivery services try to offer a cornucopia of selections from as many restaurants as possible. A Bengaluru startup called Dazo, however, is taking the opposite approach. Dazo (formerly known as TapCibo) only works with a few partners, who each make just two dishes available on the platform for lunch, afternoon snacks, and dinner. Read More
Face++, Whose Facial Recognition Tech Is Used By Alibaba, Raises $25M
Face++, a Chinese startup that makes facial recognition technology used by Alibaba, has secured an additional $25 million for its series B round. Along with capital raised in November, this brings the company’s total series B to $47 million. A Face++ representative tells TechCrunch that existing investors Qiming Venture Partners and Innovation Works returned for the round. Read MorePitch Your Startup In The Austin And Seattle TC Pitch-Offs
Hot on the heels of Disrupt, we’re (re)packing our bags to come to two of our favorite cities in the world, Austin and Seattle. We’ll be hitting Austin on June 23, where we’ll get a little weird, and then we’ll head up to Seattle on June 25 for our third-annual Seattle Pitch-Off. These will be nights to remember, but prep starts now. The first priority is going… Read MoreTechCrunch Is Headed To Grand Rapids For A Mini-Meetup And Pitchoff
Join John Biggs and myself next week in Grand Rapids, Michigan for a mini-meetup and pitch-off. We’ll be at Start Garden’s new space on Thursday, May 21 from 5:00 – 8:00. The bar opens at 5:00 and the pitches start at 5:30. The event is free to attend and I’m sure the open bar will feature some great Michigan beers. Please RSVP here. Five local startups will present… Read MoreTinkergarten Is Using Technology To Get Kids Back Outdoors
Many parents today recall childhoods where we were pushed out of the house by our parents, while told simply to “go outside and play.” But our children seem to be growing up in a different world: one filled with scheduled activities, hovering parents, and a lot of screen time. A new startup called Tinkergarten, now backed by half a million in seed funding, wants to change that… Read MoreBrand Networks Acquires Social Ad Platform Shift For $50M
Social marketing company Brand Networks continues to gobble up the competition — it just announced that it’s acquiring Shift in a $50 million cash-and-stock deal. Back in 2013, it acquired Optimal, another social media advertising company. Brand Networks founder and CEO Jamie Tedford (pictured above) said “the success of our own business on-boarding Optimal” made… Read MoreAspect Ventures Closes Its First $150 Million Fund
Aspect Ventures, a fund started by Accel Partners’ Theresia Gouw and Draper Fisher Jurvetson’s Jennifer Fonstad, said today that it has closed its first $150 million fund. Guow spent 15 years at Accel Partners as a partner, while Fonstad spent 17 years at Draper Fisher Jurvetson as a managing director. They set out to raise a fund in February last year, which will be geared… Read MoreVouch Raises $6 Million Series A For Its Social Network For Credit
Vouch, a so-called “social network for credit” founded by ex-PayPal and ex-Prosper alumni, now has an additional $6 million in Series A funding to continue to grow its business. While there are a number of alternative lending startups on the market today, Vouch’s differentiating factor is that it leverages a person’s social connections in order to determine their… Read MoreSunrise Launches Meet, A Sleek Feature To Schedule Meetings From Your Phone
Chances are you often switch between your calendar and email apps on your phone in order to tell someone when you are available. Scheduling meetings has been a pain point for years, and popular calendar app Sunrise is tackling this issue with a new feature called Meet. This is the first major release following Sunrise’s acquisition by Microsoft. Read More$474M Fund Will Support Oxford University Spinouts
A new £300 million U.K. fund has been set up to support high tech startups looking to spin out of the University of Oxford. The fund is being raised by Oxford Sciences Innovation (OSI), a newly formed company that is working in partnership with Oxford University and its commercialization arm, Isis Innovation. Read MoreMarketing Startup Percolate Raises $40M More
Percolate is announcing that it has raised $40 million in Series C funding. I’ve written previously about the company’s social media tools, which allow marketers to find and publish content on social networks. (It works on mobile too.) Read MoreCloud-Based Sales Software Pipedrive Closes $9 Million Series A
Pipedrive, which offers Software-as-a-Service designed to help small companies manage and increase sales, has closed another deal of its own. The Estonia/U.S.-based startup and AngelPad alumni has raised a $9 million Series A round led by Bessemer Venture Partners, money it will use to accelerate growth and further build out its product. Read More
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