Catawiki may not yet be a household name outside of Europe, but the Accel-backed online auction house is one of the region’s fastest growing startups. In fact, according to founder and CTO Marco Jansen, speaking on stage at the TechCrunch Disrupt London conference this afternoon, the company has seen 45,000% growth in revenue over the past four years. No, that’s not a typo. But… Read More
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Everwise, a New York-based company whose online service connects “protégés” with mentors –from new entrepreneurs, to budding sports coaches, to people looking to rise through the ranks of Fortune 500 companies — is taking the wraps off the bigger business that it’s been quietly building over the the past year. Now, the three-year-old, 40-person outfit has… Read More
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China’s largest messaging app will invest 50 million rand (about $3.4 million USD) in African startups. WeChat said in a blog post that will work with Cape Town tech strategy firm Batstone to find promising early-stage companies. Read More
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Nexus Venture Partners, the Indian VC firm that has invested in startups such as Snapdeal, Craftzilla and Lybrate, has reloaded for more deals after it announced a new $450 million fund. Read More
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Back in June, the WSJ reported that Airbnb had raised a massive $1.5 billion round of funding. Today, the company confirmed those reports by way of SEC filing. The total offering and sold amount is $1,499,937,904.00 for those keeping score. Airbnb’s valuation is now at or above $25 billion, which is just staggering. It sounds like Airbnb is going to focus on strengthening itself… Read More
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Everyone can shoot video but few can record or afford a legal soundtrack. Until now. With Jukedeck’s new artificial intelligence music composition technology, creators can get a cheap, royalty free soundtrack custom-made for their video. Jukedeck users don’t even need musical talent. They just select the mood, style, tempo and length, and Jukedeck returns a unique song to match… Read More
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Vevo, the world’s largest music video platform, has today announced its first acquisition: Showyou, a subscription-based video streaming platform that helps users find video content that might appeal to them. Vevo is a joint venture of Universal Music Group, Google, Sony Music Entertainment and Abu Dhabi Media, and offers music videos from major record labels, which are then… Read More
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Klarna co-founder and CEO Sebastian Siemiatkowski took the stage at Disrupt London today to discuss his payment startup and the wider financial tech ecosystem in Europe and in the U.S. Klarna isn’t a household name outside of Europe yet. The company only launched there in September, thanks to a partnership with Overstock.com. Still, Siemiatkowski, who met his co-founder when they worked… Read More
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Send Gigster your app idea and it sends you back that app. No coding. No hiring. No wrangling freelancers. Just a fundamental shift in how software gets built. That’s why Andreessen Horowitz has led a new $10 million Series A for Gigster just 18 weeks after its launch. The lauded venture firm was impressed with Gigster’s artificial intelligence engine. It converts a… Read More
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Today at TechCrunch Disrupt London, our own Connie Loizos sat down with a cadre of Silicon Valley investors to dig into what is going down on the American side of the pond, and how the group viewed the European startup scene. The group agreed that things in the States might be just a bit too warm. Andy McLoughlin of SoftTech noted that many companies are having a difficult time raising at… Read More
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