economy
Payment orchestration platform Gr4vy pulls in another $15M in a Series A extension
Retailers often build their own “orchestration” platforms for payment processing and routing, but these can be complex to maintain. Spreedly plays in this space, and, last year, new startup Gr4vy…
Meet Paysail, the startup making B2B payments faster using crypto
Companies use invoices to pay for many of their major costs, ranging from materials to contract work. Most still rely on solutions built on top of bank transfers or credit…
Masters, an app for training with celeb athletes, closes a $2.7M seed funding round
It’s now 2022 and there are many, many apps out there that allow you to do cardio or build muscle by taking classes inside smartphone apps. We are all familiar…
Daily Crunch: After clinching $12.3B valuation, Brex hires Meta exec as chief product officer
Hello friends and welcome to Daily Crunch, bringing you the most important startup, tech and venture capital news in a single package.
Novo, the SMB neobank, nabs $90M at a $700M valuation
Novo, the startup building a new kind of banking service from the ground up for small and medium businesses, has closed a significant round of funding to take the next…
EduMe raises $20M to scale its corporate learning platform targeting gig workers and other ‘deskless’ employees
“Deskless” workers have become a big focus for tech companies looking for new opportunities in the B2B market, and today a startup targeting this segment with e-learning tools is announcing…
Ivorian e-commerce startup ANKA, formerly Afrikrea, raises $6.2M pre-Series A
A study by McKinsey & Company on general e-commerce activities in Africa says consumer spending will reach over $2 trillion in the next three years. Much of this spending falls…
Nigeria’s ThankUCash secures $5.3M to build infrastructure for cash back, deals and BNPL services
Loyalty, deals and rewards services are a rarity in most African markets. The unit economics and other factors such as currency instability make such businesses hard to pull off in…
Goldfinch raises $25M from a16z to power its DeFi lending protocol for borrowers in developing countries
For all of the excitement pulsing through the so-called web3 space in the past year, most of the heartiest sums of investor dollars have seemed to find their way toward…
Alto raises $40 million to help individuals make tax-savvy investments in assets like crypto and artwork
Alternative investments are having a moment. Their popularity has surged over the last decade, with the asset class growing from just over $3 trillion in 2008 to more than $10…
NFT kingpin OpenSea lands monster $13.3B valuation in new raise
The NFT auction marketplace OpenSea had a blockbuster 2021 and as a result is seeing its private valuation grow more quickly than almost any other startup. The crypto firm announced…
Featured Article
African tech took center stage in 2021
Two years ago, the African tech ecosystem saw newfound attention from global players that translated to the continent’s best year of receiving venture capital. From varying sources, it is estimated up to $2 billion went into African tech startups in 2019. With high-profile visits from the most famous Jacks (Ma and Dorsey), a long-awaited first…
TechCrunch’s Alex Wilhelm, Natasha Mascarenhas and Mary Ann Azevedo, the trio behind the Equity podcast, dive into what’s in store for startup due diligence.
Taxdoo raises $64M to expand from tax compliance to a wider set of financial tools for e-commerce companies
With e-commerce becoming increasingly globalized, a company called Taxdoo, which builds API-based tools to help e-commerce companies with tax compliance and other accounting needs, is announcing a round of funding:…
Google’s Africa Investment Fund makes first investment in Uganda’s SafeBoda
Internet giant Google announced today that it has made the first investment from its Africa Investment Fund in Ugandan super app SafeBoda. The undisclosed investment comes two months after Alphabet…
UBQ Materials’ plastic replacement product attracts $170M from impact investor TPG Rise
UBQ Materials, which claims it has developed a plastic-like material made from 100% unsorted household waste, has raised a $170 million funding round led by TPG Rise, TPG’s global impact…
As the Great Resignation gathers pace, businesses that differentiate by leveraging their own data will be most likely to win, retain and recruit the people they need.
Big Cartel staff are voluntarily recognized as the latest tech workers union
Yesterday, e-commerce company Big Cartel’s co-founders Matt Wigham and Eric Turner voluntarily recognized the Big Cartel Workers Union. After the new year, the union — which represents all 30 non-management…
Mesh Payments racks up $50M to help corporate users manage spend and payments
Now that the world appears to have settled longer-term into working in a significantly more distributed way in the wake of COVID-19, companies are getting more serious about using tools…
VentureFriends raises $112M fund aimed at Southern Europe, Middle East and LatAm
Southern Europe has sometimes been seen as a little bit of a backwater in terms of venture capital funding. However, that has gradually started to change in recent years. Earlier…
The macro trends forcing change on the investment management industry
Power in the investment management industry is shifting to the money holders from money managers, driven by several major economic, social and political trends.
Factor raises seed round to streamline an overlooked part of the supply chain
The “last mile” in the supply chain has gotten lots of attention during the pandemic. Even e-commerce giants like Amazon have struggled to surmount the challenges of distributing product fast…
SF’s Tradeshift, a supply chain finance platform, raises $200M
Tradeshift — the late-stage startup tackling supply chain financing — has announced a $200 million funding round in equity and debt from a combination of existing and new investors, including…
Felix Capital adds Julien Codorniou, ex-head of Meta’s Workplace; Susan Lin as newest partners
Felix Capital, the London VC firm that has built a portfolio emphasizing investments in startups in the ecosystem that supports the creative class, is bringing on two more partners, Julien…
Long-time Lyft CFO departs to become CFO at NFT marketplace OpenSea
Lyft’s long-time CFO Brian Roberts, who took the company public, announced Monday that he was departing the rideshare company that he joined in 2014 to take the same role at…
Tech stocks are getting hammered (again)
I have a run of internal meetings starting in 15 minutes, so we have to be quick, but tech stocks are taking body blows yet again today. A selloff earlier…
Norrsken Foundation’s hub opens in Rwanda, to house 1,000 entrepreneurs by next year
In 2019, Swedish coworking space and investment fund Norrsken Foundation announced the launch of its first entrepreneurship hub outside the Scandinavian nation in Rwanda. The center, located in Kigali, has…
Frontegg, a Tel Aviv-based startup that provides SaaS companies with the core user management tools they need to build their own services, today announced that it has raised a $25…
Fresh from a $10M round, Plan A launches SaaS tool for ESG reporting aimed at startups/VCs
With key ESG reporting regulations such as the EU Taxonomy and the Sustainable Finance Disclosure Regulation (SFDR) covering more than 75% of European companies across the EU and the U.K.,…
With $3B expected in 2021, Singapore is becoming a fintech capital
Despite its small size (less than 5 million total population), Singapore is quickly reaching investment levels of countries many times its size.
