Ladder

Fort Ross Ventures raises late-stage fund, expands European activity

Seven-year-old venture firm Fort Ross Ventures just raised its fourth fund. The firm focuses on fintech, cloud technologies, AI/machine learning, business process automation services, edtech, foodtech

Equity Monday: Byju’s raises more money, somehow, as tech stocks fall

Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines. This is Equity Monday, our weekly kickoff that tracks the latest pri

Ladder raises $100M on a $900M valuation for a platform selling flexible term life insurance

Life insurance has had a new lease on life in the era of insuretech, and today one of the companies building a business out of rethinking everything — from target customers through to how to pro

Pear hosted its invite-only demo day online this year; here’s what you might have missed

Pear, the eight-year-old, Palo Alto, California-based seed-stage venture firm that has, from its outset, attracted the attention of VCs who think the firm has an eye for nascent talent, staged its sev

Celebrity funds from Jay Z, Will Smith and Robert Downey Jr. are backing a life insurance startup

Ethos, the company that bills itself as making life insurance accessible, affordable and simple, has officially come out of stealth with an $11.5 million investment led by one of the world’s top

Startups want to change what you insure and how you insure it

In an insurer’s ideal world, there’d be a profitable policy for every conceivable risk. Click once, and you’re covered. But in the real world, insurance hasn’t kept up with the changes of rece

Update: Life insurance startup Ladder launches in California

Update: This story has been updated to reflect that as of January 2016, Haven Life, the MassMutual’s high tech life insurer, was available in 43 states as of the time of publication.  Ladder,