Startups

Want to start a DAO? It’s not that hard. Want to join a DAO? It’s even easier, but there are several steps to get connected. Some of those steps are daunting. That’s why Alex Taub started Upstream, which attempts to make starting and onboarding for a DAO much easier. Tune in to the next TechCrunch

Education options during and after incarceration have never been particularly extensive, despite the best intentions of educators. Emerge Career is working on changing that, and its early success in putting formerly incarcerated folks to work is attracting investment from both VCs and government programs. It was only August when Emerge first appeared as it came

Stability AI, the venture-backed startup behind the text-to-image AI system Stable Diffusion, is funding a wide-ranging effort to apply AI to the frontiers of biotech. Called OpenBioML, the endeavor’s first projects will focus on machine learning-based approaches to DNA sequencing, protein folding and computational biochemistry. The company’s founders describe OpenBioML as an “open research laboratory”

We’re encouraged to think of pitch meetings as a trial by fire: If an entrepreneur can negotiate deadly traps and slay the doubt monsters that bedevil tech investors, they’ll be rewarded with a golden SAFE note at the end of their quest. Particularly for first-timers, the pitch has become an existential drama, which can lead

Benjamin Döpfner has been building companies since he was a teenager.  One of his more recent ventures was based in Berlin, and at the time of its founding in 2019, Germany actually had negative interest rates — meaning that the company was paying back 50 basis points, or half a percent for each euro that

Over the last six months, I’ve written up 25 Pitch Deck Teardowns — the popular series of articles where I review a pitch deck in detail, celebrating the wins and gently (and sometimes not-so-gently) suggesting improvements. We’ve seen 74-slide decks (yes, really), decks that are riddled with spelling mistakes and bogged down by hideous design

How to compete without losing your mind — and your runway Mary Ann Azevedo 9 hours Competing in an increasingly crowded space can be nerve-wracking. Competing in an increasingly crowded space amid a challenging fundraising environment is even more nerve-wracking. We all know that cash is not nearly as readily available in 2022 as it

Meet Fintecture, a French startup that wants to upgrade B2B payments. While many payment companies have focused on B2C payments with Stripe leading the way, B2B payments haven’t changed much over the years. “In the U.S., there are still a lot of paper checks. In Europe, it’s mostly transfers and manual reconciliation,” Fintecture co-founder and

The venture capital industry is built on signals. Lead investors help close rounds, pro rata rights show promise of a company, and the partner title gives validity to folks within firms looking to close deals. Revere, a new bet being built by former AngelList executive Eric Woo and family office operator Chris Shen, is playing

Sophie Alcorn Contributor Sophie Alcorn is the founder of Alcorn Immigration Law in Silicon Valley and 2019 Global Law Experts Awards’ “Law Firm of the Year in California for Entrepreneur Immigration Services.” She connects people with the businesses and opportunities that expand their lives. More posts by this contributor Dear Sophie: How can early-stage startups

Microsoft has backed Wemade, a popular video game developer that has made aggressive bets on blockchain in recent years, the latest sign of tech giants’ showing growing interest in web3. South Korea’s Wemade said in a press release that it has raised $46 million from Microsoft, Shinhan Asset Management and Kiwoom Securities. In a regulatory

Earlier today, The Exchange dug into changing investor sentiment regarding growth and profitability. A new report looking at cloud and software companies from Battery Ventures ran the math on how investors are rewarding faster growth from less unprofitable companies — dare we say, profitable companies? — with the data indicating that, at least for now,

What’s better: growing quickly or making lots of money? The answer, in startup terms, is both. But because there is a natural tension between growth (which usually comes with incremental costs, often in advance of new revenues) and profitability (allowing revenue to further extend its coverage of operating costs), most startups lean more on the

Everybody wants to talk about software supply chain risks these days, whether that’s security teams, developers or government officials. It’s no surprise then, that VCs, despite the current economic climate, continue to fund startups in this space, too. One of the newest members in this club is Arnica, a startup that takes a somewhat broader

To get a roundup of TechCrunch’s biggest and most important stories delivered to your inbox every day at 3 p.m. PDT, subscribe here. Last week was a hell of a week in startup news, and Henry wrote a particularly good summary of everything that went down, including Elon Musk’s Twitter purchase, Meta’s troubles, and a

Politician turned venture capitalist Bradley Tusk recently spoke at a TechCrunch Live event on how startups should approach regulation. Dibbs CEO and co-founder Evan Vandenberg joined Tusk in the conversation. The event is embedded below, and it’s free to watch. Throughout the talk, the two guests expressed their firm stance on the power of utilizing

Natalie Gordon founded Babylist in 2011, and today it’s a leading marketplace for baby gift registries. But it didn’t take off at first. It took several years for Gordon to spin the startup into its current trajectory and several more for users to follow. This is normal! And we’re excited to have Jesse Draper join

Welcome to Startups Weekly, a nuanced take on this week’s startup news and trends by Senior Reporter and Equity co-host Natasha Mascarenhas. To get this in your inbox, subscribe here. “There’s more dry powder powder than ever before.” “There’s never been a better time to start a startup.” “Discipline is the new scale.” (OK, OK,

In a previous era, aspiring journalists relocated to New York, would-be actors made pilgrimages to Hollywood and plucky tech founders moved to the Bay Area so they could attract capital and talent. But San Francisco is no longer the center of the startup universe, and it hasn’t been for a while. Cities like Boulder, Detroit

Hello and welcome back to Equity, a podcast about the business of startups, where we unpack the numbers and nuance behind the headlines. We hope that you are in good form this Friday, alive, well and ready to rock. We certainly were. And in a change of pace, as our dear Mary Ann was off this

Perhaps sitting perched somewhere in sunny Miami, Florida, is a founder wondering the best ways to fundraise for a company when situated outside a traditional tech hub like the Bay Area. They need not worry. Last week, Mike Asem from M25, Elizabeth Yin of Hustle Fund and Accel’s Rich Wong answered that question at TechCrunch

Skidattl wants to use augmented reality to get people to engage with the real world. It’s a story we’ve heard before from AR companies, particularly as they pit themselves against the potentially isolating effects of virtual reality. But rather than chasing metaversal Pokémon creatures on the street, Skidattl aims to use AR “beacons” to show

If you’re a parent, one of the hardest things about getting divorced is still having to deal with your ex about financial matters regarding your children. And, according to a 2015 report, just 50.2% of all 13.6 million custodial parents in the United States had either legal or informal child support agreements. Even in those

“There’s a big wave of innovation in managing cloud costs,” Team8 co-founder and managing partner Liran Grinberg told TechCrunch as part of our latest cloud investor survey. Having noticed tailwinds for the wave of B2B startups that offer cloud cost-optimization solutions, and cloud management more broadly, we were curious to know where VCs thought the

In tech, emerging trends usually elicit excitement and surprise, whether it’s the hot new sector that every venture capitalist is clamoring for a stake in, or the rise of a new technology you haven’t heard of. Until you only hear of it. This year, however, one of the biggest trends to form inside tech was

Hello and welcome back to Equity, a podcast about the business of startups, where we unpack the numbers and nuance behind the headlines. This is our Wednesday show, where we niche down to a single topic, think about a question and unpack the rest. This week, Natasha is bringing one of her favorite Disrupt panels to your

WhatsApp is used by more than two billion around the world, and is an important tool for many small businesses. But as they scale up, even WhatsApp for Business might not be able to keep up with their needs. That’s where WATI (WhatsApp Team Inbox) steps in. Built on WhatsApp for Business’ API, WATI has

In films, screenwriters always include a moment known as the Promise of the Premise. It’s the part of the story where the audience settles in to the new world they’ve entered. One of my favorite examples is in the first Harry Potter movie, when Hagrid takes Harry to Diagon Alley, the magical shopping district that

Matt Van Itallie Contributor Matt Van Itallie is the founder and CEO of Sema, which provides codebase analytics for M&A. Investment activity is down now, but it’s likely to pick up in 2023. And when investments ramp up, so does M&A. Will your organization and your code pass technical due diligence when it’s your turn?

54gene co-founder and chief executive officer Dr. Abasi Ene-Obong has stepped down from his executive role, the African genomics company confirmed to TechCrunch today. The three-year-old company has appointed General Counsel Teresia L. Bost as interim CEO. She will be supported by Chief Operating Officer Delali Attipoe, the company said. Ene-Obong, on the other hand,