small business
LA-based Boulevard raises $27 million for its spa management software
Boulevard, a spa management and payment platform, has raised $27 million in a new round of funding despite a business slowdown caused by the COVID0-19 pandemic. Founded four years ago…
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Why is GoCardless COO Carlos Gonzalez-Cadenas pivoting to become a full-time VC?
Index Ventures, a London- and San Francisco-headquartered venture capital firm that primarily invests in Europe and the U.S., recently announced its latest partner. Carlos Gonzalez-Cadenas, currently COO of London-based fintech GoCardless and previously the chief product officer of Skyscanner, will join Index in January. Gonzalez-Cadenas is a seasoned entrepreneur and operator, but has also become…
Miami-based Marco Financial is launching a revenue-based lending service for Latin American SMEs
Marco Financial, a new Miami-based startup, is looking to take a piece of the roughly $350 billion trade finance market for Latin American exporters with its novel factoring services business. …
Facebook launches Facebook Business Suite, an app for managing business accounts across Facebook, Instagram and Messenger
Facebook this morning launched a new app designed to make it easier for businesses to manage in a single place their pages and profiles across Facebook, Instagram and Messenger. The…
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5 resources Black entrepreneurs can leverage to build and grow
If there isn’t a resource hub for black entrepreneurs in your city, create one.
Rewarding civic pride and boosting the local economy? Akron, Ohio is trying out a startup for that
Akron, Ohio, the hometown of LeBron James; the seat of the U.S. tire industry; the 127 largest city in the U.S.; and the home of America’s first toy company, is…
Businesses on Facebook can now respond to customers in Messenger
Facebook is launching a new inbox on Messenger today to make it easier for business owners to respond to incoming customer messages from the same app they use to message friends and…
Tech for good during COVID-19: Sky-high gifts, extra help and chips
When Roger Lee, the co-founder of Human Interest, heard that San Francisco imposed shelter-in-place orders, he started blogging about layoff news and posting crowdsourced lists of employees who were laid…
Digits launches a free expense monitoring dashboard for small businesses, closes on $22M Series B
Digits, a fintech startup hailing from the same team that built and sold Crashlytics to Twitter, is officially launching today after two years of development. It’s also announcing a $22…
SMB mentorship platform Ureeka raises $8.6M, will facilitate grant programs for Facebook, Salesforce
The best founders seek out great mentors and guidance from folks who know best, but during the coronavirus pandemic, asking for help when it’s needed is critical for all entrepreneurs.…
Small businesses are out of time, but COVID-19 aid comes with massive roadblocks
We need to flatten the curve of this disease, but we also need to bend the curve for small businesses on the brink of collapse.
PayPal, Intuit & Square approved to offer loans to small businesses through coronavirus relief program
Fintech companies have been lobbying for weeks to be able to participate in the U.S. government’s emergency lending program for small businesses. Now those efforts have paid off, as PayPal,…
The intersection of small business, tech and our financial system is more important than ever
Let’s focus on preserving jobs and providing relief to our economy’s beating heart — small businesses.
Silicon Valley Bank only started processing stimulus loan applications today
In a sign of just how broken the process is for startups looking to receive stimulus dollars, Silicon Valley Bank, the bank that claims “more innovative startups bank with us…
Yelp pauses GoFundMe Covid-19 fundraising after opt-out outcry
A fundraising program that Yelp and GoFundMe put in place this week to help local businesses impacted by the Covid-19 pandemic has been paused after public outcry over how it was…
European startups applaud Commission plan to rethink stock options
Startups have welcomed proposals from the European Commission aimed at cutting red tape and shrinking cross-border barriers for small businesses as part of a new EU industrial strategy plan with…
Vimeo’s new app helps small businesses create professional social videos
Vimeo signaled last year its plans to move further into the social video creation and editing space with its acquisition of short-form video editor Magisto. Today, the company is unveiling…
Google Maps tests a social networking feature with the ability to ‘follow’ Local Guides
Google Maps will soon begin testing a new feature that’s more common to social networks like Facebook, rather than a maps app: the ability to find and follow other users.…
Google’s CallJoy phone agent for small businesses gets smarter, more conversational
Earlier this year, Google’s in-house incubator launched CallJoy, a virtual customer service phone agent for small businesses that could block spammers, answer calls, provide callers with basic business information and…
WhatsApp’s latest feature, Catalogs, caters to small businesses skipping the web for mobile
WhatsApp is expanding the capabilities of its dedicated app for business owners who want to reach their customers on smartphones. The Facebook-owned company is today introducing to the WhatsApp Business…
ZenBusiness raises $15M to help founders launch and grow ‘worry-free’
There are two sides to starting a new business. On one side, entrepreneurs need creativity, imagination — a dream, essentially — to find, build, and market a new product to…
Kabbage secures $200M to fuel its AI-based loans platform for small businesses
Kabbage, the AI-based small business loans platform backed by SoftBank and others, is adding more firepower to its lending machine: the Atlanta-based startup has secured an additional $200 million in…
VCs are failing diverse founders; Elizabeth Warren wants to step in
The presidential candidate outlines plans to provide capital to 100,000 new minority-owned businesses.
Amazon sellers to hit UK high streets in year-long pop-up pilot
Internet shopping has been blamed for boarding up high streets across the UK. So it looks politically judicious for Amazon, the original ecommerce behemoth, to now be attaching its brand…
Skedulo raises $28M for its mobile workforce management service
Skedulo, a service that helps businesses manage their mobile employees, today announced that it has raised a $28 million Series B funding round led by M12, Microsoft’s venture fund. Existing…
Verified Expert Lawyer: Leslee Cohen
Leslee Cohen has been practicing law for decades in her hometown of Chicago. She’s been working with more and more startups over the last ten years, after co-founding her own…
Funding Circle, a P2P SME lending platform, steps towards an IPO
UK founded startup Funding Circle, a p2p lending platform which focuses on the underserved small business market, has announced a “potential intention” to float on the London Stock Exchange. In…
Disrupting the paycheck, Gusto’s Flexible Pay allows employees to pick when they get paid
People should get paid for work they have done. It’s a pretty simple principle of capitalism, but a principle that seems increasingly violated in the modern economy. With semi-monthly paychecks,…
States will be able to charge sales tax on online purchases thanks to the Supreme Court
In a five-to-four decision issued today, the Supreme Court ruled that states can make online businesses collect sales taxes — even if they don’t have a physical presence in that…
Get ready to start seeing more local ads on YouTube
YouTube’s video ad creation service aimed at helping small business reach YouTube viewers is now available more broadly across the U.S. The company announced this morning that YouTube Director onsite,…
