A who’s-who of celebrities, investors and celebrity investors have come together to invest $47 million into Aspiration, the company launched by a former speechwriter for President Bill Clinton to challenge the traditional banking industry. Read More
from TechCrunch
Co-working startup Mindspace recently raised $20 million as it gears up to launch its first two locations in the U.S. While Mindspace is looking to go big or go home in the U.S., it’s starting off slow with its first two locations in San Francisco and Washington, D.C. Mindspace started in Tel Aviv about four years ago and has since expanded to Germany, Poland and the U.K. Read More
from TechCrunch
Upstream Security, a new startup founded by two cyber security industry veterans, announced a $9 million Series A today to help protect connected vehicles and eventually autonomous cars. Today, that probably means a car using a service like OnStar to connect over the internet to your manufacturer for a menu of in-car services such as automated crash detection and stolen vehicle assistance. In… Read More
from TechCrunch
People often describe work as a rat race, but for a lot of engineers, that isn’t too far off. Take one Jira ticket off the queue, fix the bug or add the feature, mark the ticket as complete and move as quickly as possible to the next ticket. Engineering for many organizations — perhaps despite the intentions of management — ends up being more like a deli counter or an I Love… Read More
from TechCrunch
In what should be an interesting beginning to the coming avalanche of ICO failures, the SEC has come down hard on Munchee, a company that built a $15 million token sale. The SEC chairman recently noted that coin offerings are, in fact, securities and that pre-sale participants must be registered with the SEC. The Munchee ICO aimed to fund the MUN coin, a payment system for restaurant reviews.… Read More
from TechCrunch
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