early-stage startups
Aventurine wants to help would-be entrepreneurs with its IP-first investment thesis
While it would be ideal if the startup made it, the financial returns, perhaps lasting decades, come through the IP operation.
Sequoia heats up early-stage startup investments in India and Southeast Asia
On a recent winter morning in New Delhi, Rajan Anandan and Pieter Kemps were pacing the floor of a five-star hotel, quizzing a group of over two dozen young startup founders about their goals. One fou
Tech layoffs are creating a new era of scrappy (and humbled) founders
An emerging class of founders is reminding the ecosystem how collapse can be an activator.
A flat year for crowdfunding isn’t a bad sign at all for early-stage startups
Crowdfunding investment totals in 2022 didn't surpass 2021 but activity declined significantly less than venture did.
Meet Seoul-based accelerator SparkLabs’ 19th batch of startups
SparkLabs Korea, a Seoul-based seed to early-stage accelerator, held a demo Day on Thursday for its 19th cohort of companies. The latest demo day marks its tenth year after SparkLabs launched its acce
Singapore’s Arbor Ventures notches $193M toward next early-stage fintech fund
Arbor Ventures, funder of fintech and shopping startups like installment loan company Tabby and Amazon brand factory Heyday, has locked down $193 million toward its largest fund to date, TechCrunch ha
CoinFund’s Seth Ginns on why the crypto downturn has spared early-stage startups
Crypto token prices have been trending downward for the past year, with BTC and ETH both down over 50% since last September. Yet despite the downturn in cryptocurrency prices, early-stage web3 startup
Y Combinator is still paranoid
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 to
Indonesia-focused AC Ventures closes oversubscribed $205M third fund
More investor money is flowing into Indonesia’s startup ecosystem. Today, AC Ventures, which focuses on early-stage startups in the country, announced it has raised $205 million in committed capital
Owning the paycheck is the key to fintech success
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines. This week, Natasha and Danny, otherwise known as your two new favori
Walnut wants to crack open flexibility for healthcare bills
Healthcare insurance, if you’re lucky to have it, only covers a subset of conditions in the United States. As a result, patients can often get burdened with horror story charges, like huge deductibl
Former Asana employees want to take on Discord with a positive platform for creator communities
In a creator-economy world, if you’re only as good as your last YouTube video, then your next YouTube video had better be bigger and louder than the last. Vibely, a new startup co-founded by Asana a
Early-stage privacy startup DataGrail gets boost from Okta partnership
When Okta launched its $50 million Okta Ventures investment fund in April, one of its investments was in an early-stage privacy startup called DataGrail. Today, the companies announced a partnership t
The five great reasons to attend TechCrunch’s Enterprise show Sept. 5 in SF
The vast enterprise tech category is Silicon Valley’s richest, and today it’s poised to change faster than ever before. That’s probably the biggest reason to come to TechCrunch’s first-ever sh
Norrsken opens East Africa startup fund and hub in Kigali
Startups in East Africa have a new source for investment and mentorship. Sweden’s Norrsken Foundation — a co-working space and investment fund based in Stockholm — opened its tech fund and e
Announcing TechCrunch meetups in Buenos Aires and Santiago next week
TechCrunch is heading to Latin America for the first time and staging its first-ever Startup Battlefield Latin America on November 8 in São Paulo to find the next wave of early-stage startups tacklin
11 reasons we didn’t invest in your company
Like most VCs, we see dozens of deals each week. We've developed a funnel that enables us to quickly eliminate those that don't fit our general investment criteria. The deals that survive this initial
The two best pieces of early-stage pitching advice
Over the past 10 years I've been on the first cap tables of three startups for which I've been responsible for closing their capital-raising efforts. I’ve raised money from the smallest angel invest
Seed investing is bifurcating
A curious gap has emerged in the early-stage investment landscape: While emerging startups are able to raise very small, sub-$500,000 rounds, seed and pre-A investors are requiring increasingly higher
Romulus Capital closes $75 million fund to back early-stage tech startups
Romulus Capital has raised its third—and largest—fund to back early-stage startups, many sourced in labs at MIT, the alma mater of the firm’s founding General Partner, Krishna K. Gupta. The fir