Startups
Mallard Bay is building a marketplace and a vertical SaaS platform for guided fishing and hunting industries.
Meet Cherry, an AI shopping assistant that helps you discover products using screenshots or images
A new app from a startup called Cherry is aiming to transform the online shopping experience with its AI assistant that allows users to discover products across the internet using…
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Late-stage VCs may be preventing their startups from going public in 2024
While some investors are loudly bemoaning that the IPO window can’t stay shut forever, other VCs themselves are actually part of the problem. A lot of standard VC deal terms give investors the ability to block an IPO or acquisition if they didn’t think the timing or price was right, Eric Weiner, a partner at…
Welcome to Startups Weekly — your weekly recap of everything you can’t miss from the world of startups. Sign up here to get it in your inbox every Friday. Pornhub…
The company is promising to make marketing for games easier, and we know that great marketing is one of the crucial differences between an OK outcome and a smash-hit success.
TipTop, the new app from Postmates’ founder and CEO, now lets you buy devices with trade-ins and cash
Customers can trade in an old Samsung Galaxy for a discount on an iPad, an Apple HomePod mini for a Nintendo Switch, or an iPhone for a Nothing phone.
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Microbiome startups respond as industry is accused of ‘questionable practices’
The biotech sector has embraced the microbiome in recent years, a green field market powered by cheap genome sequencing and venture dollars, promising bespoke treatments for everything from gut troubles to skin problems. But a report in Science alleges that these companies lack scientific rigor and meaningful regulation, offering little more than guesswork on a…
VCs will get liquidity in 2024 from the secondary market, not IPOs
If you asked a bunch of VCs at the end of 2023 if the IPO market would finally open again in 2024, most of them would have said yes. We…
ShopMy lands $18.5M to help influencers earn more money from promoting products
ShopMy, a marketing platform for content creators to connect with brands and monetize their content, announced that it raised $18.5 million. The company will use the money to help scale…
Volley’s AI-enabled ball machine for racquet sports can simulate gameplay
A new sports tech startup, Volley, aims to revolutionize the way racquet sports players (platform tennis, tennis, padel and pickleball) train with its AI-enabled sports training machine. Unlike traditional tennis…
Enterprise SaaS investment makes a comeback — but not where you’d expect
When we examined venture investment amounts in enterprise SaaS startups, we were surprised at the top categories.
After losing access to Twitter’s API, Block Party pivots to privacy
Block Party, a startup developed by software engineer and tech diversity advocate Tracy Chou, was among the victims of Twitter’s (now X’s) API changes earlier this year, forcing it to…
Ready Player One creator debuts ‘Open,’ a metaverse battle royale experience
Earlier this year, Readyverse Studios — co-founded by blockchain tech company Futureverse and Ernest Cline, the mind behind the sci-fi franchise Ready Player One — announced “The Readyverse,” an interactive…
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Techstars’ $80M partnership with J.P. Morgan is on the rocks, employees say
The fate of the Advancing Cities programs — and some of the around 20 people who work at Techstars in this program — is up in the air.
Welcome to Startups Weekly — your weekly recap of everything you can’t miss from the world of startups. Sign up here to get it in your inbox every Friday. This…
AI2 Incubator, spun out of the Allen Institute for AI in 2022, has secured a windfall $200 million in compute that startups going through its program can take advantage of…
Anonymous social apps face another reckoning as UNC System to ban Yik Yik, Fizz, Sidechat & Whisper
Anonymous social apps are in for a reckoning. Yes, again. This week, University of North Carolina (UNC) System President Peter Hans announced a plan to block the use of popular…
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NFT fantasy sports startup Sorare lays off 13% of staff as web3 gaming continues to sputter
Web3-enabled fantasy sports platform Sorare laid off 22 employees based in its New York office in February. The move comes as the startup wants certain teams to be concentrated at the company’s Paris headquarters to improve communication and efficiency, a source familiar with the matter told TechCrunch. “As we plan for our next stage of…
k-ID launches a solution that helps game developers comply with ever-changing child safety regulations
Making a video game successful is already hard. Doing so while complying with the growing number of child safety laws and regulations around the world is an almost insurmountable task.…
This Korean startup wants to take on Carta in cap table management
A South Korean startup called QuotaLab is on a quest to follow in the footsteps of Carta, the cap table management company that’s used by a host of startups and…
Deel acquires Africa’s PaySpace, says it’s crossed $500M in ARR
HR startup Deel said it is acquiring Africa’s PaySpace in a deal that marks its largest acquisition to date.
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VC Trae Stephens says he has a bunker (and much more) in talk about Founders Fund and Anduril
Last night, for an evening hosted by StrictlyVC, this editor sat down with Trae Stephens, a former government intelligence analyst turned early Palantir employee turned investor at Founders Fund, where Stephens has co-founded two companies of his own. One of these is Anduril, the buzzy defense tech company that is now valued at $8.4 billion…
The current-generation AI technology is the tech equivalent of a toddler, and all the mediocre reviews various GenAI software is getting is tantamount to judging a fish by its ability…
In the midst of CommandBar’s pretty slim pitch deck, there are some innovations that are worth shining a light on.
Backed by $10M Series A, TravelJoy is riding the post-COVID demand for expert travel planning
A travel-focused startup that the COVID pandemic could have killed has instead thrived. TravelJoy, a company providing a suite of tools for travel entrepreneurs and travel business operators, is now…
Rec emerges from stealth to modernize Parks & Rec management and booking
Park and recreation organizations help communities thrive. However, many of them use outdated systems that make program registration stressful for residents, potentially leading to lost revenue for cities. Rec, a…
Reddit should go public at $5B, according to secondary data
If secondary buyers aren’t buying shares at more than a $5 billion valuation, it wouldn’t be wise for Reddit to price its IPO above that.
Mill’s updated bin will turn your food waste into chicken feed before breakfast
The Nest co-founders’ latest startup quickly incorporated customer feedback, arriving at not just new hardware but a tweaked business model, too.
EQ Tickets combines cheaper sports and event tickets with a social network
A startup that aims to combine the ticket-buying experience online with a social network, EQ Tickets, is today emerging out of stealth to help make discovering shows and other live…
Former Twitter engineers are building Particle, an AI-powered news reader, backed by $4.4M
A team led by former Twitter engineers is rethinking how AI can be used to help people process news and information. Particle.news, which entered into private beta over the weekend,…
