Klook, a service for finding and booking travel activities, has closed a $30 million Series B funding round led by Sequoia China. Existing backers Matrix Partners and Welight Capital, a firm founded by former Tencent executives, also took part. This new money takes Hong Kong-based Klook to $36.5 million from investors to date. Last October, it closed a $5 million Series A round led by Matrix.… Read More
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Booksy, an app that enables appointment-based businesses, such as hairdressers and beauty salons, to take online booking and operate other aspects of their business, has closed $4.2 million in Series A funding. in Series A funding. Read More
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The growing fitness boutique industry sees inefficiencies when there are empty spots in a workout class. Studios often have to pay the yoga teacher the same whether there are five people or 15 who attend a session. Several startups have tried to solve this problem, by offering discounted passes to meet demand. ClassPass gained early traction with consumers, but San Francisco-based Zenrez… Read More
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Editor’s note: This post originally appeared on TechNode, an editorial partner of TechCrunch based in China.
Didi Chuxing’s deal to acquire Uber China seemingly left the Chinese ride-hailing giant as the last man standing and therefore sole winner of China’s vast ride-sharing market. However, Didi’s success has also served to open new opportunities for other… Read More
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Lyft is out pitching to investors while competitor Uber surrounds itself in controversy. The Wall Street Journal first reported that they are chatting about a $500 million round. We’re hearing that they are targeting a roughly $6 billion valuation, slightly above the $5.5 billion they were valued at in their last private round. The timing makes sense given the failed sale process last… Read More
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When Snap prices its IPO after the closing bell today, it will be the first tech company to go public this year. It will also be the largest tech company to go public in the U.S. since Alibaba debuted in 2014. Because of the dearth of recent tech offerings, all eyes will be on the Snapchat parent to see what it means for the “IPO window.” The performance of large tech offerings… Read More
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Snap has given a final price for its IPO, setting the company’s valuation at nearly $24 billion with a price of $17 per share, according to a report by the Wall Street Journal. With that, it looks like Wall Street had plenty of an appetite for Snap despite multiple major concerns about the company’s business. Slowing user growth, rising burn and a dependence on Google and Amazon… Read More
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In the market for online education, Udacity remains focused on teaching its students about software development, data science and machine learning. To this avail, Udacity brought out its M&A team for the first time to strategically acquire CloudLabs, a small shop building interactive coding environments that let groups collaboratively code from within their browsers. You… Read More
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Snap will begin publicly trading tomorrow, which means that it will officially give a price for its shares in its initial public offering this evening. Originally setting a range between $14 and $16, the company set its own valuation lower than what tech observers might have expected given the hype of the first big tech IPO of 2017. Read More
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Yelp has acquired restaurant reservation app Nowait for $40 million, in an all-cash deal, the companies announced this morning. The move will bring Nowait’s waitlist system and seating tool to Yelp, where it’s been integrated in the Yelp app, to complement the existing Yelp reservations product and its mobile food-ordering system, Yelp Eat24.
Founded in 2010 by Ware Sykes… Read More
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