Latest from Connie Loizos
Startups
A first look at nine new IndieBio NY companies that will present to VCs next month
6:11 pm PST • December 22, 2023
It was pure coincidence, but months before the pandemic took hold around the world, IndieBio — a startup accelerator devoted to startups using biology to solve large problems — expanded…
Featured Article
Seed-stage investors react to higher hurdles for Series A funding
The hurdle for Series A funding is a lot higher than it was a year ago — and investors in seed-stage companies are having to respond. They don’t have much choice if they want their startups to survive. When the market abruptly turned in the spring of 2022, late-stage companies…
11:10 am PST • December 14, 2023
Venture
Benchmark, the storied venture firm, sees the AI race as still wide open
2:11 am PST • December 1, 2023
Yesterday in Helsinki, this editor interviewed four of the six general partners at Benchmark, the nearly 30-year-old Silicon Valley firm that’s known for some notable bets (Uber, Dropbox), paying each…
Featured Article
Tiger Global chieftain Scott Shleifer transitions to advisory role after wild ride
Tiger Global Management is going through a major management change. Per a message that founder Chase Coleman sent this afternoon to investors of the 22-year-old venture- and hedge-fund outfit and obtained by TechCrunch, Coleman is taking over both the outfit’s public company investing and private equity businesses, while the longtime…
2:19 pm PST • November 21, 2023
Featured Article
Yet another former Silicon Valley darling is convicted of investor fraud
This year will be remembered for a lot of things. Among them could be the growing number of stars in the startup world who were later convicted for defrauding investors. Roughly six months after Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes headed to jail for four counts of wire fraud, and just two…
10:15 pm PST • November 16, 2023
Featured Article
01 Advisors, founded by Dick Costolo and Adam Bain, just closed on $395M more
You might imagine that if two former Twitter chieftains and a longtime C-suite Facebook exec agreed to build a venture firm together, they would chase after nascent social networks. You’d be wrong. 01 Advisors, an outfit founded in 2018 by former Twitter CEO Dick Costolo and former Twitter COO and…
1:10 pm PST • November 7, 2023
Featured Article
A new breed of companies expand in San Francisco’s prime areas
Ten years ago, Pear VC, then a tiny new venture firm, operated out of a nondescript office in Palo Alto that was enlivened by bright, computer-themed art. Last week, the outfit — which closed its largest fund to date in May — quietly inked a deal to sublease 30,000 square…
11:44 am PDT • November 4, 2023
Featured Article
Catching up with Keith Rabois on the state of VC, his newest bet and who he’s backing for president
Chances are that however busy you are, Keith Rabois is busier. He’s an active investor as a general partner at Founders Fund, the early-stage outfit co-founded 18 years ago by Peter Thiel. He’s also the CEO of OpenStore, the company that he co-founded in 2021 to acquire and scale commerce…
7:11 pm PDT • October 27, 2023
Fintech
Carta’s CEO reaches out to customers about bad press, alerting them to bad press
3:27 pm PDT • October 25, 2023
In an attempt at damage control, the CEO of the equity management startup Carta, Henry Ward, today emailed customers, telling them that if they are concerned about “negative press” tied…
Paddy Cosgrave has stepped down as CEO of Web Summit, the 14-year-old conference business that he co-founded and which has gone on to host one of Europe’s biggest annual tech…
Startups
Made Renovation, which intrigued, then infuriated, its customers, is shutting down
3:50 pm PDT • October 18, 2023
In August, we reported that a four-year-old, venture-backed remodeling startup called Made Renovation was failing its customers, by their own telling. Though it marketed itself as a one-stop shop to…
Venture
Exclusive: KKR just closed its third tech growth fund with roughly $3 billion, $400 million of which came from KKR
10:01 am PDT • October 18, 2023
KKR, a global investment powerhouse, tells TechCrunch exclusively that it just held a final close of its third and latest tech growth fund — KKR Next Generation Technology Growth Fund…
Startups
Exclusive: Y Combinator beefs up with a string of new lieutenants
8:50 am PDT • October 6, 2023
Y Combinator continues to change shape under CEO Garry Tan, a founder-turned-investor and online influencer. While Tan and his colleagues have attracted media attention lately for quarrelsome social media posts…
AI
The hot new thing: AI platforms that stop AI’s mistakes before production
8:50 am PDT • September 28, 2023
If you haven’t noticed, a growing amount of code that’s being generated today is “AI-assisted.” In fact, Scott Guthrie, Microsoft’s executive vice president of Cloud and AI, estimated back in…
Venture
Industry Ventures has $1.7 billion more for secondary stakes and tech buyouts
8:30 am PDT • September 27, 2023
Industry Ventures prides itself on trying to zig when others zag. When the outfit was first founded in San Francisco in 2000, the startup market was red hot, and its…
Featured Article
Al Gore and Lila Preston question everything in their firm’s new climate report
Every year for the past seven years, Generation Investment Management, the sustainability-focused public and private equity firm co-founded by former U.S. vice president Al Gore, has published a sustainability trends report that aims to become as much a bible to the climate tech industry as Mary Meeker’s famous “internet trends”…
4:00 pm PDT • September 13, 2023
Venture
Sapphire Partners is now managing all of CalSTRS’ emerging manager portfolios
10:43 am PDT • September 13, 2023
Sapphire Partners, the LP arm of enterprise software-focused VC Sapphire Ventures, announced this morning that moving forward, it will be managing five funds with $1.4 billion in assets that are…
Venture
Exclusive: Cendana Capital closes on $470M more to back seed-stage fund managers
6:46 pm PDT • September 8, 2023
Michael Kim of Cendana Capital is often a first call for emerging seed-stage fund managers. Cendana has invested in many VC teams that have gone on to enjoy great success…
Venture
This veteran VC doesn’t think Arm’s IPO will have the impact that everyone is hoping it will
12:02 pm PDT • September 3, 2023
The startup industry has been whistling a happy tune since the British chip designer Arm filed paperwork with the SEC late last month for an IPO. The growing expectation is…
Hi all! Connie Loizos here with a brief bulletin: I’m the new General Manager and Editor-in-Chief of TechCrunch. [Puffs on cigar.] I know, you’re busy – I get it –…
Venture
This venture-backed startup has quietly bought more than 80 mom-and-pop shops
10:50 pm PDT • August 24, 2023
Teamshares is a low-flying, New York-based startup with big ambitions to capitalize on an opportunity in plain sight: that of small businesses without a succession plan. It’s not a small…
Hardware
Chip company Arm files for Nasdaq listing in IPO anticipated to be this year’s biggest
3:12 pm PDT • August 21, 2023
Arm, the U.K.-based chipmaker owned by Japan’s SoftBank since 2016, has filed for a Nasdaq listing five months after announcing it had filed confidential, preliminary IPO paperwork with U.S. regulators.…
Earlier this week, The New York Times shone a light on some of the desperation that founders are experiencing as they try and fail to secure compute power for their…
Startups
Insiders bet more on Fizz, a social network that has now bubbled up at 80+ college campuses
1:51 pm PDT • August 10, 2023
Fizz, a burgeoning social network established by two Stanford dropouts, captured the attention and interest of Stanford University students early on with its approach to anonymity and engagement. Now the…
Venture
Made Renovation promises ‘tech-enabled’ remodels; customers describe ‘absolute nightmare’
9:18 pm PDT • August 8, 2023
Last year, Jonas Heineman was overseeing a team of commercial project managers as they installed hundreds of electric vehicle charging stations. Heineman’s wife was also pregnant with their first child.…
Venture
Dan Gwak of Point72 Ventures on why defense tech is becoming the next big thing for investors
9:48 pm PDT • August 4, 2023
Dan Gwak has had a more varied life than many investors. He grew up in Jakarta, the son of Korean parents who ran a shipping business. After high school, he…
Venture
Tuesday Capital, a Silicon Valley firm that moved to Austin during the pandemic, captures $31M for its newest seed-stage fund
12:40 pm PDT • August 1, 2023
Austin seems to agree with Tuesday Capital. When the 12-year-old seed-stage outfit — originally called CrunchFund — was co-founded by longtime VC Patrick Gallagher and TechCrunch founder Michael Arrington, it…
Venture
Reed Jobs, son of Steve Jobs, takes the wraps off a $200 million venture fund that will back new cancer treatments
8:02 am PDT • August 1, 2023
Reed Jobs, the 31-year-old son of Apple co-founder Steve Jobs and philanthropist Laurene Powell Jobs, has spent his career behind the scenes. But he’s “stepping into the spotlight,” with a…
Venture
Andy McLoughlin of Uncork Capital on the firm’s new funds, succession, and why next year could be a bloodbath (sorry, startups)
8:59 pm PDT • July 27, 2023
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…
Venture
Exclusive: Goodwater Capital snags $1B across two new funds, despite cooling interest in consumer tech
3:30 pm PDT • July 25, 2023
Goodwater, one of comparatively few firms to focus exclusively on consumer tech investments, has closed on $1 billion in capital commitments across its fifth early-stage fund and its third opportunity-style…
