Latest from Rebecca Szkutak
The HVAC industry is going through a transformation. The old guard of tradespeople are on the cusp of retiring while private equity firms are consolidating the industry. Airship is building…
While online discourse would make it seem that venture has retreated to the Bay Area, with San Francisco being the most important place to build a startup, Index Ventures is…
Unsurprisingly, AI companies dominated the day, with startups looking to apply the technology to problems like estate planning and automating clinical trial data.
Y Combinator CEO Garry Tan wants to bring the famed accelerator’s Demo Day presentations back as in-person events by the end of the year. During Tan’s opening remarks during Wednesday’s…
While some tech companies have lofty goals to transform drug discovery through AI or to mine metals from asteroids, others set out to solve very…
From Keith Rabois to Ethan Kurzweil, a lot of VCs have switched firms or spun out of storied VC institutions to launch their own funds this year. These employment changes…
James McGinniss has been obsessed with decarbonization and the energy grid since he was a high schooler over a decade ago. Now, his startup David Energy has a lofty goal:…
The IPO market has not roared back in 2024 as many investors hoped it would — not yet, at least. Elevated interest rates (this week’s 50 bps rate cut notwithstanding)…
Do you remember what life was like before the cloud? Before this AI revolution? Prukalpa Sankar, the co-founder and co-CEO of Atlan, sat down with…
Featured Article
Cohere co-founder Nick Frosst’s indie band, Good Kid, is almost as successful as his AI company
Nick Frosst, the co-founder of $5.5 billion Canadian AI startup Cohere, has been a musician his whole life. He told TechCrunch that once he started singing, he never shut up. That’s still true today. In addition to his full-time job at Cohere, Frosst is also the front man of Good…
Silicon Valley startup accelerator Y Combinator will expand the number of cohorts it runs each year from two to four starting in 2025, Bloomberg reported Thursday, and TechCrunch confirmed today.…
Media & Entertainment
Tune.FM wants to take on Spotify by using crypto to pay artists up to 100x more per stream
Tune.FM is a decentralized music streaming service where users pay for each song they stream using Tune.FM’s crypto token JAM.
Sydney-based Neurode has come up with a novel way to offer some relief to people with ADHD: a wearable headband that can track and treat ADHD symptoms. And you only…
Hormones play a massive role in when and how easily women can get pregnant, but research and resources in this area are lacking. Mira is…
In the first half of 2024 alone, more than $35.5 billion was invested into AI startups globally.
Featured Article
Startups are getting fined, or sometimes banned, by individual states
The problem, experts say, is that each state has its own complex fees, tax, and business registration requirements.
The Equity podcast crew is wrapping up another eventful week, with real estate, AI agents, gambling and secondary markets — which are, of course, a form of legalized gambling. Mary…
The American sports betting market produced $10.9 billion in revenue in 2023 for casinos, sportsbooks and iGaming, according to the American Gambling Association. One of the reasons this industry is…
TechCrunch Disrupt 2024
Announcing the final agenda for the Builders Stage at TechCrunch Disrupt 2024
Get ready for TechCrunch Disrupt 2024, our signature event for startups of all stages, happening at Moscone West in San Francisco from October 28-30. This year, we’re expecting a massive…
OpenAI is in talks to raise a new round of funding at an eye-popping $100 billion-plus valuation, sources told The Wall Street Journal this week. It turns out investors have…
New Enterprise Associates (NEA) is getting back into the secondaries game. The Silicon Valley-based VC raised more than $468 million for NEA Secondary Opportunity Fund, according to an SEC filing.…
In Latin American countries like Brazil and Chile, messaging platform WhatsApp has become one of the most popular apps to use to buy things online. It was even the e-commerce…
Eric Ly has a storied career: He started as an engineering intern at IBM, and 20 years later found himself co-starting and serving as the…
Venture
Palico is now the first FINRA-approved company to facilitate online LP-led secondaries deals
Limited partners selling their investment stakes in venture capital funds to other LPs on the secondary market is nothing new. But traditionally these transactions happen offline through an opaque network…
Featured Article
VCs are so eager for AI startups, they’re buying into each others’ SPVs at high prices
VCs are increasingly buying shares of late-stage startups on the secondary market as they try to get pieces of the hottest ones — especially AI companies. But they are also increasingly doing so through financial instruments called special purpose vehicles (SVPs). Some of those SPVs are becoming such hot commodities…
For some businesses, there is a clear path to growth that doesn’t involve acquiring other companies or expanding organically: franchising. The U.S. has more than 800,000 franchise businesses, according to…
In 2020, Kathryn Wu launched a side hustle while she was working as a product engineer at Pinterest. Wu started a milk tea company, OhTea, with the hopes of connecting…
The release of ChatGPT in November 2022 sparked a new wave of AI companies. It also brought attention to the companies that were already building…
Startups
Rippling’s Parker Conrad says founders should ‘go all the way to the ground’ to run their companies
This is just one area of leadership where Parker Conrad takes a contrarian approach. He also said he doesn’t believe in top-down management.
What is the right way to build a software business? Many startup advisers say that B2B software should solve one pain point, gain customers, then add features as their company…
