Arbitrum, a text, image and video moderation service founded by German Gedgauds, who previously headed up Ask.fm’s moderation team and product, has raised $500,000 in funding. Backing the Riga, Latvia-based startup is Balaclava Lab, the investment vehicle of Ask.fm founders Ilja Terebin, Mark Terebin and Oskar Liepins. Read More
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Lots of online eyewear retailers offer to send you a selection of frames to try on at home before you buy, a model made popular by Warby Parker in the U.S. and GlassesDirect in Europe. However, although sending you the exact same frame as you intend to buy has largely solved the conversion problem selling eyewear online creates, it can be pretty costly. Read More
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Following months of rumors, Indian e-commerce giant Flipkart has confirmed that it has raised $1.4 billion in new funding at a post-money valuation of $11.6 billion to battle Amazon and Alibaba. The deal includes some big name strategic investors: China’s Tencent, eBay and Microsoft, which joint existing Flipkart backers that include Tiger Global, Naspers, Accel and DST Global.
The… Read More
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Tenzo, a London startup and graduate of Techstars, has built what looks like an interesting and timely platform to help restaurants (and potentially any brick ‘n’ mortar retailer) get real-time data insights on how they and their staff are performing. Read More
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Saleswhale, a Singapore-based startup that uses artificial intelligence to let companies automate their sales emails, has raised a $1.2 million seed round. The capital was provided by VC firms Monk’s Hill Ventures, Gree Ventures and Wavemaker Partners with a number of angel investors. Those include early Dropbox hire Albert Ni, Pieter Walraven (who founded now Google-owned… Read More
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Okta came out of the gate strong today in its Wall Street debut, attracting the type of institutional investors CEO Todd McKinnon says should be around for the long haul. This IPO comes at a time when Wall Street appears ready to embrace enterprise technology companies. Read More
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The Wall Street Journal wrote a story that Spotify is “seriously considering” joining the stock market without an IPO. The news was also reported by Mergermarket. The idea would be to go public without the fundraising event; instead, employees and venture capitalists would sell their shares to investors directly. Read More
from TechCrunch
Okta, the identity management software company, went public on the Nasdaq today, continuing a wave of tech IPOs. After pricing its IPO at $17, Okta raised $187 million by selling 11 million shares in the offering. And the company was greeted with strong investor reception, closing up 38% at $23.51 on Friday. While it’s a good omen for its performance in the stock market, it also means… Read More
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It’s no secret that data is the hot new revenue source for automakers, who are seeing additional profit opportunities bloom as vehicles become more connected and they can retrieve a ton of useful data that’s incredibly valuable when deployed correctly. Israeli startup otonomo has been on top of that trend since its founding in 2015, with nine automakers worldwide using its platform… Read More
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Welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast where we unpack the financial side of technology. This week Katie Roof, Matthew Lynley and your servant sat down with Gene Munster, best known for his bullish takes on Apple as an analyst. Munster is now a venture capitalist at Loup Ventures, where he’s a managing partner. As a group we dug into Lyft’s… Read More
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