Seed
In an industry where creators are often tossed aside like yesterday’s lootboxes, MegaMod swoops in with a heroic promise to put them front and center.
Loop Golf looks to take the stress out of booking a tee time
Golf has exploded in popularity in recent years thanks to the pandemic and the popularity of Netflix’s Full Swing documentary series. More than 531 million rounds of golf were played…
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In 2024, many Y Combinator startups only want tiny seed rounds — but there’s a catch
When Bowery Capital general partner Loren Straub started talking to a startup from the latest Y Combinator accelerator batch a few months ago, she thought it was strange that the company didn’t have a lead investor for the round it was raising. Even stranger, the founders didn’t seem to be…
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Some VCs are turning away from crypto, but CoinFund is diving deeper with latest $158M fund
A fund like this could help revive growth in the ecosystem, but it will take many like this in order to create another wave of capital like we saw in 2021.
8 VCs say they are still bullish on SAFE rounds, but it’s not 2021 anymore
SAFE rounds, or simple agreements for future equity, have been around since Y Combinator invented them a decade ago. But they took on a different role in 2021 when they…
While seed-focused VCs are enjoying this market, other investors are pulling out and deal count numbers are down.
Funds offering ‘friends and family’ checks could bring the change underrepresented founders need
Even the matter of branding a firm as a “friends and family” venture rather than “pre-seed” may attract founders from communities in which venture language isn’t common.
‘Most active investor’ FJ Labs closes on $260M across two new funds
Fabrice Grinda says he never intended to run a venture firm. He just really (really) enjoyed angel investing. In fact, by late 2013, when he was on the verge of…
Sequoia injects $195 million into an ever-eager seed environment
Sequoia Capital, a storied venture capital firm, announced today that it has launched a $195 million dedicated seed fund, its fifth. The vehicle will be used to back founders across…
Is it time for a Common App that helps startup founders pitch a ton of investors all at once? Afore Capital wants to make it happen.
Early-stage startups say no runway, no problem heading into 2023
Despite strong economic headwinds, many young startups don’t think the current market will materially impact their runway or headcount.
French VC firm Partech has closed another seed fund dedicated to early-stage tech startups — the fund is called Partech Entrepreneur IV. This time, Partech has raised €120 million. It represents…
After months of declining venture deal activity, investors are starting to get active again, especially at the early stages.
Berlin’s Visionaries Club VC boosts its funds with €400M worth of fresh capital for B2B investments
It was back in 2019 that we reported on Visionaries Club, a new, Berlin-based, European VC focusing on B2B, founded by Sebastian Pollok and Robert Lacher. At the time, Visionaries…
Party rounds have been around for over a decade and a subject of debate for just as long. The positives are obvious. The cons are more complicated.
Massdriver wants to abstract away infrastructure to let devs focus on coding
Modern DevOps turned back the clock on agile software development. Them’s fighting words, but they’re words Cory O’Daniel, the CEO of Massdriver, stands by. From his point of view, engineers…
Tech industry reacts to Adam Neumann’s a16z-backed return to real estate
WeWork co-founder and former chief executive Adam Neumann’s career arc has felt synonymous with the rise and eventual fall of unicorn dreams. The entrepreneur, whose fall from grace has attracted…
South Africa’s Talk360 raises $4M to build single payment platform for Africa
Many businesses looking to set up pan-African operations are often met with the challenge of establishing payment services that are appropriate for each country they go to. Most of the…
Precursor Ventures’ first hire just spun out to start her own venture firm
Sydney Thomas, who was the first hire at Precursor Ventures, a seed and early-stage focused fund that backs first-time founders, is starting her own venture firm. The investor is going…
Felt’s $15 million chance to prove that maps are the next big medium
Despite economic turmoil in the tech world, an Oakland-based startup shows that moonshots are still getting funded. Felt, co-founded by Sam Hashemi and Can Duruk, wants to disrupt the role…
The market for startup investment has changed. From the hottest year in startup VC history to a period of pessimism, how did we get here? This digest of TechCrunch coverage…
London startup Weaver gets $4M to build out a vetted marketplace for home renovations
Weaver, a London-based marketplace and SaaS contract negotiation platform for matching homeowners/architects planning major home renovation projects with vetted contractors, has closed a $4 million seed round to expand nationally.…
Kenyan fintech Zanifu nabs $1M to bridge MSME financing gap, eyes Ghana, Uganda expansion
Kenyan fintech Zanifu is set to upgrade its platform and grow the number of micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) it extends stock financing to after securing $1 million in…
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Our favorite startups from YC’s Summer 21 Demo Day, Part 2
From beaming actors into the class room to plucking things out of space, the second day of Y Combinator’s S21 Demo Day was a fresh snapshot of what nearly 200 startup teams believe is the future of innovation. Yesterday, the TechCrunch team covered the first half of this batch, as well…
Entrepreneur Kuljeev Singh has had a three-course meal in the restaurant business. He was an angel investor in ChefHero, a part-time owner in an Australian-style meat pie shop and, now,…
Norwest Venture Partners’ Lisa Wu to teach founders how to think like a VC at TC Early Stage
The best venture capitalists take moonshot risks based on due diligence, support portfolio companies through ups and downs and find focus through noise. When you look at the job description…
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Former Asana employees want to take on Discord with a positive platform for creator communities
In a creator-economy world, if you’re only as good as your last YouTube video, then your next YouTube video had better be bigger and louder than the last. Vibely, a new startup co-founded by Asana alumni Teri Yu and Theresa Lee, wants to turn the constant, and often exhausting, beast…
If you didn’t think much about seed in 2020, you’re not alone. Late, huge rounds consumed most of the media’s oxygen, leaving smaller startups to compete for scraps of attention.
Stories about seed funding often contain sappy metaphors about planting seedlings and nurturing them to maturity. In reality, it’s a brutally Darwinian business: most companies fail, successful ones get diluted…
Seattle-based BloomAPI is announcing a $2.4 million seed round this morning for its solution to the broken medical records release process. It’s no secret that the entire U.S. healthcare system…
