Uncork Capital
Lunar.dev wants to help developers take control of third-party API costs
Developers have been increasingly using third-party APIs to build their applications, and depending on the API, the costs can escalate quickly. It’s been challenging for companies to find ways to…
Andy McLoughlin of Uncork Capital on the firm’s new funds, succession, and why next year could be a bloodbath (sorry, startups)
A few weeks ago, Uncork Capital shared the news that it recently closed on $400 million in capital commitments across two new funds: $200 million for a seed-stage vehicle and…
New social investment platform Follow taps influencers to mirror their investment strategies
As Follow’s creator network grows, users can subscribe to additional creators to better diversity their portfolios.
Conor Burke spent much of his career in the back office of a big bank in Ireland. His team was tasked with digitizing the onboarding process — particularly document-heavy manual…
In late-2020, Presso pivoted. It made a lot of sense at the time. People weren’t traveling much and therefore weren’t particularly hung up on getting their business attire dry-cleaned. Certainly…
Stark wants to make it easier to design accessible websites and software
Stark is a startup that wants to help designers make software and websites more accessible for people with disabilities, and they’ve created a set of tools that plug into popular…
Fountain raises $100M to expand its applicant tracking system
The “Great Resignation,” the trend where workers are leaving their jobs at a higher-than-usual rate, is continuing unabated. According to a May PwC survey, 20% of employees said that they’re…
Mutiny, which personalizes website copy and headlines using AI, raises $50M
Advertising, particularly online advertising, isn’t a surefire way to bolster business. A report from ecommerce analytics platform Glew drives the point home: In 2015, 75% of retailers that spent at…
Torii puts your business teams in sync as your tech stack evolves
Torii shows customers which cloud apps they have and which are most appropriate for return on investment.
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…
Hallow, a religious app for Catholics, talks the talk as religious platforms draw investor attention
According to PitchBook data, faith-based, mostly Christian, apps attracted $175.3 million in venture funding this year through mid-December, more than tripling the $48.5 million they attracted from VCs last year.…
Ex-Uber software engineers raise $3M for Sperta, a 6-month-old startup that wants to help fintechs better manage fraud risk
Working together at Uber’s risk team, Yifu Diao and Ming Fang came to realize that with the hypergrowth the company was seeing came fraud challenges. Diao’s first project at the…
Go grow your flow plateau with Centered’s calendar judo, radio and co-working combo
Centered is an app that’s designed to help you find your flow throughout the day, guard your calendar so you can get some work done and add a personal assistant…
As companies search for hourly workers, Fountain brings in $85M to assist them
Fountain’s technology whittles down the median days to hire to 8.70 from the industry average of 36 days.
UserGems raises $20M to take on ZoomInfo to help with prospecting and sales intelligence
Finding a way to connect with people who might buy from you, while spending less time pursuing those who will never be interested, is something akin to a holy grail…
Continuum unveils its on-demand access marketplace for top-tier executive talent
Continuum’s model does the outbound work for companies and presents a list of executives, within 48 hours, who are available to start that day, working 15 or 20 hours per…
Microsoft acquires TakeLessons, an online and in-person tutoring platform, to ramp up its edtech play
Microsoft said in January this year that Teams, its online collaboration platform, was being used by over 100 million students — boosted in no small part by the COVID-19 pandemic…
In many ways, there has never been a better time to be a venture capitalist. Nearly everyone in the industry is raking in money, either through long-awaited exits or because…
Upscribe, raising $4M, wants to drive subscription-first DTC brand growth
Merchants use Upscribe’s technology to drive subscriber growth, reduce churn and enable personalized subscription experiences, like skipping shipments and swapping out products.
Human Interest raises $200M at a $1B valuation, plans for an IPO
Less than six months after raising $55 million in a Series C round of funding, SMB 401(k) provider Human Interest today announced it has raised $200 million in a round…
Stensul, a startup aiming to streamline the process of building marketing emails, has raised $16 million in Series B funding. When the company raised its $7 million Series A two years…
As the pandemic creates supply chain chaos, Craft raises $10M to apply some intelligence
During the COVID-19 pandemic, supply chains have suddenly become hot. Who knew that would ever happen? The race to secure PPE, ventilators and minor things like food was and still…
Seed funding tips and tricks from Uncork Capital founder Jeff Clavier
Angel funding, seed investing and generally focusing on earlier stage investing is a huge business in the world of startups these days — it helps investors get in early to…
MonkeyLearn raises $2.2M to build out its no-code AI text analysis service
A few years back, startups focusing on artificial intelligence had a whiff of bullshit about them; venture capitalists became inured to young tech companies claiming that their new AI-powered product…
Menten AI’s combination of buzzword bingo brings AI and quantum computing to drug discovery
Menten AI has an impressive founding team and a pitch that combines some of the hottest trends in tech to pursue one of the biggest problems in healthcare — new…
Finnish VC Icebreaker launches second fund to continue backing ‘pre-founders’ and pre-seed startups
Icebreaker.vc, the Finnish venture capital firm that backs “pre-founders” and pre-seed to seed-stage startups, has launched a second fund, with a first close of €50 million. That’s already significantly larger…
‘A perfect storm for first time managers,’ say VCs with their own shops
Until very recently, it had begun to seem like anyone with a thick enough checkbook and some key contacts in the startup world could not only fund companies as an…
Molekule hopes to clear the air with $58 million in Series C funding and Berkeley Lab’s testing
Silicon Valley air purifier startup Molekule was born out of an idea Dr. Yogi Goswami had back in the ’90s using photo-voltaic technology to kill air pollutants. His son, a…
Portfolio bloat: What’s happening to thousands of startups going nowhere fast
Earlier this week, much was made of the e-commerce business Brandless deciding to shutter its doors. Industry observers found its fate particularly interesting, given that Brandless was only a few…
15 tickets left to TechCrunch Winter Party tomorrow
On February 7, aka this Friday, the Bay Area startup community will descend on Galvanize to celebrate everything great and small about tech startups at the 3rd Annual TechCrunch Winter…
