TechStars
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Techstars debuts new fund for companies too early for its own accelerator
Techstars, a startup accelerator born in Boulder, Colorado, has always been comfortable carving out niches. Unlike perhaps its closest competitor, Y Combinator, Techstars has gone the divide and conquer route of early-stage startups support: Instead of one massive batch, it has dozens of dedicated programs all over the world, ranging from Tel Aviv to Lagos…
New bank, who dis? Lifestyle-focused neobank Cogni pivots to web3
Digital banking startup Cogni is joining the ranks of companies hopping on the crypto bandwagon. The mobile-based platform, founded in 2018 out of Barclays’ accelerator program (which is operated by…
Circa wants to make first-of-the-month rent payments obsolete
Renters can choose their payment method, split up payments and schedule the payments, all while having flexibility should income become a problem.
As Russians head for the exits, Immigram platform launches to scale professional migration
The number of applications for international visas in the U.K. and elsewhere, in order to leave Russia, has exploded following the latter’s invasion of Ukraine. It’s estimated that since February…
Flutterwave backs UK fintech Dapio in $3.4M round for its contactless payments play
Dapio, the U.K.-based cashless payment solutions provider for businesses, today announced that it has raised $3.4 million to fuel the launch of its ‘Tap to Pay’ solution for Android users…
Ghanaian fintech Dash raises $32.8M seed to build connected wallets for Africans
Global financial transactions are facilitated mainly by payment processors such as Visa or Mastercard. They are responsible for communication between banks and fintechs to settle transactions for consumers and businesses…
Portuguese VC Shilling tops up its Founders Fund, hitting $59M in capital to deploy
Further evidence of the booming Portuguese tech ecosystem is emerging today with the news that venture capital firm Shilling is topping up its “Founders Fund” to €52 million ($59 million),…
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Founder of She Matters developed an app for Black women with postpartum depression
Jade Kearney was experiencing postpartum depression when her daughter was six months old. She was trying to complete her second masters at NYU, while dealing with a mental health crisis and a dearth of mental health pros who could help a Black woman navigate this situation. So Kearney did what all entrepreneurs do: She developed…
Depending on your age, getting from point A to point B might have involved paper maps — what we called an “atlas,” the giant book that lived in the pocket…
Travel app Sēkr scores $2.25 million to bring campsite inventory into the digital age
Consumers spent more than $8.5 billion in 2020 on camping reservations across the U.S., but the camping industry itself has yet to be fully digitized. Today, reserving a space at some…
Let’s say you’re a freelance engineer in Nigeria working for a U.S. company; how do you facilitate forex conversion from dollars to naira? I bet it involves using a third…
Nigeria’s AltSchool raises $1M pre-seed to build an alternative school for Africans
The demand for software engineers is expected to grow by 22% between 2020 and 2030, according to a report by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. This figure is larger than…
Will quantum computing remain the domain of the specialist VC?
Despite all the buzz, quantum investments are still not mainstream: there were about 90 quantum investments in 2021.
Nigerian restaurant management platform Orda gets $1.1M, wants to be the Toast of Africa
Cloud-based point of sales for small, medium and large-sized restaurants has increased tremendously in both size and popularity. The market, dominated by incumbents like Toast and upcoming players such as…
Refinery Ventures’ second fund aimed at getting startups to Series A
Refinery focuses on “early scale” companies, a term the firm uses to describe companies that secured a seed, but need that “oomph” to get it to Series A.
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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…
“Carl Sagan had it right, with Voyager and the pale blue dot: If you’re anywhere else in the known universe, Earth is the most interesting place to study and be…
VC is ultimately about people, not ideas, but in the current landscape, investors aren’t sufficiently getting to know founders or their experience.
StudyFree, an international student scholarships and grants platform, raises $3M seed
StudyFree — which connects students with international educational opportunities via a community-driven B2C SaaS model — has raised a $3 million seed investment round led by I2BF Global Ventures, TMT…
Kenya’s Pariti raises $2.85M led by Harlem Capital to develop startup ecosystems in emerging markets
Pariti, the Kenya-based community-led marketplace building the digital infrastructure for startup ecosystems in emerging markets, has raised $2.85 million seed, the company confirmed to TechCrunch today. The round was led…
Nigeria’s OnePipe raises $3.5M to double down on its embedded finance offering
Last year, fintech API infrastructure players came into the African tech scene, ushering in Plaid-like services to businesses and developers. And the attention on these companies, particularly from venture capitalists,…
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Choose your job title before you name your startup
The ability to quickly spin up a team and launch something is clearly the core of what makes startupland so special (and, candidly, fun to write about).
Remojo is building tools to combat digital addiction, starting with porn
Startups geared toward men’s sexual health have been doing a brisk trade for a few years now. But while the early wave of tech businesses mostly aimed to provide (easier)…
Nigerian shared mobility startup Shuttlers raises $1.6M, plans pan-African expansion
Shared transportation in Nigeria, Africa’s largest country by population, is a thriving business, at least when done the conventional way: offline. With millions of Nigerians using danfo minibuses and okadas…
MilkRun lands new capital to deliver farm-fresh groceries
The company offers a recurring subscription, and 50% of every dollar spent goes back to farmers.
PubNub raises $65M to build and run data streams for messaging, presence and other real-time aspects of ‘virtual spaces’
Data streams with continual, real-time updates of information are a critical building block of how apps and sites function today, and now a startup that has built a platform to…
What do you do to build a deck that can’t be ignored? To answer that question, we assembled a group of three exceptional venture capitalists on the Extra Crunch stage…
AtomChat secures new funding to capitalize on Latin American trend of sales through messaging
A majority of people in Latin America skip shopping on the web and instead use a combination of messaging and social apps to find inspiration, ask questions and make purchases.
Bild takes in funding to share, collaborate on hardware designs in the cloud
Bild, which came out of private beta, is streamlining the design review process so that hardware product releases can be developed faster.
In March, two Nigerian startups, Treepz (formerly Plentywaka) and TalentQL got into the Techstars Toronto accelerator program alongside eight other companies. The program, held virtually, provided these startups with funding ($100,000…
