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Company builder Entrepreneur First hires ex-Yahoo and Googler as new London head
In a recent conversation I had with a London VC, the topic of Entrepreneur First came up, as we compared notes on how far the company builder has come since its early days when the jury was well and truly out. Read More
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Startup veteran founder/investor Wendy Tan White joins BGF Ventures
If there are some noticeable gaps in the European venture scene it’s these. The first is there is still a small number of European entrepreneurs who have built products and scaled and exited and then went on to become investors, relative to the size of the market. The second is the dearth of VCs genuinely obsessed with product over “the growth numbers” as they are in… Read More
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Reverso now lets you translate words using your voice
Dictionary app Reverso is getting a major update with a focus on voice features. In particular, you can now say a phrase to translate it. This might be particularly useful if you can’t spell a word or when you don’t know anything about a language and you can ask the other person to repeat a phrase to get a translation. Conversely, when you press the tiny speaker icon, the… Read More
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Starling Bank passports to Europe, first stop Ireland
London-based Starling Bank is continuing to gather momentum. After a staggered launch of its current account kicked off in March, the digital-only bank is announcing imminent expansion to Europe, starting with the Republic of Ireland where it has attained a so-called “banking passport”. Read More
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Yoyo Wallet raises £12M Series B led by Metro Group to expand in Europe
The race to digitise the loyalty card just got a shot in the arm with the news that Yoyo Wallet, the European-based mobile payment and customer loyalty platform, has raised a £12 million Series B round, led by the US wholesale and food retail giant Metro Group. The round is joined by the UK-based Woodford Investment Management and Touchstone Innovations. The deal is subject to FCA… Read More
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TechCrunch Tel Aviv Pitch-Off: Here are your startups and judges!
On June 28 in Tel Aviv, we’re hosting the TechCrunch Meetup + Pitch-Off in Tel Aviv — and it’s gonna be a blast! We have a great lineup of judges who are going to listen to the soon-to-be-announced startup pitches and crown the winner of the Tel Aviv Pitch-Off. Tickets are still available, so grab yours today. In addition to a few on-stage interviews, you’ll get to see… Read More
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Australia wants Five Eyes to squeeze tech firms on encryption
The political rhetoric against strong encryption continues to crank up. Reuters reports today that Australia will be pushing for greater powers for countries to tackle the use of encrypted messaging services by terrorists and criminals at an upcoming meeting of ministers from the so-called ‘Five Eyes’ intelligence network. Read More
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Facebook expands its hate-fighting counterspeech initiative in Europe
Facebook has launched a third counterspeech initiative in Europe, partnering with the not-for-profit Institute for Strategic Dialogue for the launch of the Online Civil Courage Initiative (OCCI), which is aimed at tackling online extremism and hate speech. Read More
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The company called Blockchain raises $40 million
Blockchain (the company) just raised a $40 million Series B funding round led by Lakestar. Blockchain has been working on the most popular bitcoin wallet in the world. You can open a wallet on the company’s website or through its mobile apps. GV, Nokota Management, Digital Currency Group and existing investors Lightspeed Venture Partners, Mosaic Venture Partners, Prudence Holdings… Read More
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DeepMind Health inks another 5-year NHS app deal in face of ongoing controversy
DeepMind Health, the division of the Google-owned AI company that’s applying machine learning to medical data in the hopes of profiting from diagnostic gain, has inked another services agreement with the U.K.’s National Health Service — expanding the deployment of its alerts, messaging and task management app, Streams. Read More
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Sean Parker has left Spotify’s board; Padmasree Warrior, Thomas Staggs join in lead up to IPO
As Spotify inches its way to a public listing, the streaming music company — which now has 140 million users — has made some significant changes to its board of directors. Sean Parker, the early supporter and investor who once founded digital music service Napster and helped usher Facebook into the world, has left Spotify’s board of directors, along with Klaus Hommels… Read More
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Russian freight service Deliver closes seed round of $8M, with European plans
Russia-based online freight service Deliver (formerly iCanDeliver) has closed a seed round of $8 million. The startup automates the process of ordering freight transport and makes things more efficient by finding the closest sender. Read More
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Snap copied location sharing app Zenly to build Snap Map
Snap just announced a brand new feature today called Snap Map, which lets you view your friends on a map in real time and browse stories around you. If this sounds familiar, it’s because French startup Zenly has been working for years on a location sharing app so that you can see what your friends have been up to. According to multiple sources, Snap approached Zenly late last year about… Read More
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MyTutor raises £3M Series A led by Mobeus to attack UK tutor market
The online tutoring market in the US is well-developed. Varsity Tutors raised $50m; Wiseant $20m; Tutor.com sold to IAC and InstaEdu was recently bought out. So it makes sense that this model would be big in other markets. This is the thinking behind MyTutor, a London-based edtech company that connects school pupils to high-performing university students for one-to-one, online… Read More
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Twist is Slack without the annoying distractions
When Slack implemented threaded conversations, it seemed like the holy grail for internal communications. Slack finally lets you talk about multiple things in separate conversations. But Slack remains a real-time messaging service at heart, so threads don’t feel native. It works well for many teams, but some companies would prefer something a bit more asynchronous and focused. At the… Read More
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TrueLayer raises $3M Series A to provide fintech companies with easy access to bank APIs
TrueLayer, a London startup that’s built a developer platform to make it easy for fintech companies to access bank APIs — and ride the PSD2 gravy train — has raised $3 million in Series A funding. Read More
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