Immigrating to a new country is one of the most challenging experiences any person can face. In a single instant, your social networks, your ability to communicate, and your knowledge of how a society functions disappears, and nearly everything has to be learned from scratch. That extraordinary dislocation is one reason why ethnic enclaves exist in large cities like New York City or San… Read More
from TechCrunch
Vahdam Teas, an e-commerce that’s focused on selling the freshest brews on the planet, has closed a Series A funding round worth $1.4 million to grow its business.
The funding was led by new backers Fireside Venture, Mumbai Angels, Singapore Angel Network and undisclosed existing investors. The two-year-old company previously raised a $500,000 seed round from angels in January of this… Read More
from TechCrunch
Affirm, the platform that helps consumers find financing is getting some financing of its own. The San Francisco-based company confirmed that it’s raising $200 million, led by GIC, a Singaporean sovereign wealth fund. Existing investors Khosla Ventures and Spark Capital are also participating. Affirm’s valuation is estimated to be between $1.5 billion and $2 billion, as first… Read More
from TechCrunch
Advocacy marketing — the idea of getting existing customers to talk about your company and its products — is nothing new, but as marketing spend has shifted online, a number of startups have tried to figure out ways of making it more scalable. One such company is Zyper, founded by Amber Atherton, who previously featured in British reality TV show “Made in Chelsea”.… Read More
from TechCrunch
Angus Pacala has had a lifelong passion for autonomous cars going all the way back to high school. A little more than a decade ago, he followed the launch of the DARPA Grand Challenge, a Department of Defense competition that pitted research teams against each other over who could build the best autonomous car. Stanford won the challenge in 2005, which is “one of the reasons I went… Read More
from TechCrunch
After we broke the story last week that Apple was acquiring London-based music and image recognition service Shazam, Apple will be confirming the news today, we have heard. It is purchasing the startup — one of earliest players in the world of mobile music — as part of its bigger ambitions in the music business. We’ve heard that the news should be out some time between 8am… Read More
from TechCrunch
Menlo Security, a startup with a unique approach to protecting your company from malware and phishing attacks, announced a $40 million Series C round today. Menlo protects customers by never lets letting employees access an actual website or email containing malware. Instead, they isolate the original in a container, then display a clean mirror image in the browser, which has been stripped of… Read More
from TechCrunch
That didn’t toque too long! The Boring Company has now sold 30,000 hats to fund its hole-some mission, founder Elon Musk tweeted today. That’s double the sales Musk announced just three weeks ago. Production will be capped at 50,000 hats, so if the current momentum doesn’t fez out, trilby all gone soon. Read More
from TechCrunch
As Spotify continues to inch towards a public listing, Apple is making a move of its own to step up its game in music services. Sources tell us that the company is close to acquiring Shazam, the popular app that lets people identify any song, TV show, film or advert in seconds, by listening to an audio clip or (in the case of, say, an ad) a visual fragment, and then takes you to content… Read More
from TechCrunch
“We plan on making Bitmoji obsolete” says Akash Nigam, CEO of Genies. Bragging about beating one of the world’s top apps before his has even launched is emblematic of Nigam’s and Genies‘ brash style. But with $15 million in funding at a valuation over $100 million, top investors like NEA and Hollywood royalty like CAA are buying into the avatar startup. It already… Read More
from TechCrunch