Spruce, a new startup looking to speed up the mortgage, has raised $4.5 million in its series A financing from Bessemer Venture Partners, Omidyar Network, and Third Prime Capital along with a slew of private angel investors. Founded by two former employees of the robo-advisory wealth management company Betterment, the new startup is notable for a few reasons. First, it’s yet another… Read More
from TechCrunch
Binded aims to make it easier for photographers to protect their intellectual property by creating a permanent record of their copyright in a public database, namely the blockchain. The startup was previously known as Blockai, but it’s rebranding today — the new name is meant to focus less on technology and instead emphasize the idea of creating a legally binding record. Read More
from TechCrunch
It was off to the races for Appian which debuted on the Nasdaq on Thursday, soaring 25% on its first day on the stock market.
After pricing shares at $12, the company closed the day above $15, valuing the company at about $900 million.
The company helps its enterprise and government customers with app development. “Appian is the easiest way for companies to build their own… Read More
from TechCrunch
Target has reportedly rolled $75 million into Casper, the direct-to-consumer mattress startup you may have heard about in all those podcasts. The funding is a good chunk of what should end up being a more than $100 million round, according to a source at Recode, which first reported the news.
Target has confirmed it gave a bunch of money to Casper but would not confirm the amount (sigh). Read More
from TechCrunch
Customer experience chatbot developer Rulai has launched a new “low-code” chatbot development tool and raised $6.5 million to roll it out. Yi Zhang, the company’s chief technologist, and her team are launching a product that customer service managers can use to develop chatbots that will perform tasks based on customer conversations, and that can be created without a single… Read More
from TechCrunch
Mogees, the London startup behind the Mogees Pro and Mogees Play contact microphone and machine learning-based music and gaming devices, has raised $1.1 million in seed funding — capital it plans to use to embed its “gestural recognition tech” into new devices and applications. Read More
from TechCrunch
Bike sharing has taken a turn in the U.S., following trends in China. The new mode is “dockless,” where companies distribute bikes around a city or campus to be rented per trip instead of dispensing them from one station. The bikes are tracked via GPS, and can be located by users, paid for and unlocked using their smartphones. Best of all, whenever riders are done with one of… Read More
from TechCrunch
Rackspace announced today it was purchasing TriCore, giving it an enterprise applications management play to go along with its cloud management services. The announcement comes just one day after the company announced it was bringing a new CEO onboard, make it a busy week for the firm. The companies did not share the terms of the deal, but Rackspace called it the largest acquisition in… Read More
from TechCrunch
Reali wants to change how people buy and sell their homes and now it has $5 million more to work on this, thanks to a Series A investment lead by Signia Venture Partners. The company also today announced that it is expanding beyond to the entire San Francisco Bay area, including the cities of San Francisco, Oakland and San Jose, and that its app is now available on Android, too. The… Read More
from TechCrunch
College is supposed to be a life-defining experience–but that doesn’t mean students always graduate with all the skills they need to build their lives. Paragon One, an online career coaching service and mentor marketplace, wants to fill in the gaps. The startup announced that it has raised $1.9 million in seed funding from Y Combinator, Foundation Capital, Learn Capital,… Read More
from TechCrunch