Amidst a tough time for Uber, CEO Travis Kalanick’s parents were in a tragic boating accident last month that took the life of his mother. Now to grieve and clear his head before enacting changes at Uber, Travis has told his team he’ll be taken a leave of absence of unspecified length. Kalanick notes that “During this interim period, the leadership team, my directs, will… Read More
from TechCrunch
Submittable, a startup used by more than 9,000 companies to manage submissions, has raised $5 million in Series A funding.
Missoula, Montana-based Submittable was founded in 2010 with an initial focus on literary magazines that wanted help keeping track of manuscript submissions. As co-founder and CEO Michael FitzGerald put it, “We started with the poorest customers you could possibly… Read More
from TechCrunch
Indonesia is one of Southeast Asia’s most promising startup market. Today, its ecosystem gained a new investor with the launch of Intudo Ventures’ debut fund, which has more than $10 million to invest into about 12 to 16 early-stage startups, as well as joint ventures with overseas companies that want to break into the Indonesian market. Read More
from TechCrunch
Drone Racing League has closed on $20M in Series B funding, led by U.K telecommunications company Sky, Liberty Media Corporation (which owns the Formula 1 racing brand) and Lux Capital. This new funding means that the league has now raised over $32M in three rounds. Allienz (who is also the title sponsor of DRL) and World Wrestling Entertainment also joined the round as new investors in… Read More
from TechCrunch
Timeular, the Austrian startup behind the neat Zei time-tracking device that we wrote about last year, has raised €1 million ($1.1 million) in funding to develop new productivity coaching tools to help you work smarter. The company is best known for the Zei, its eight-sided device that is Bluetooth-enabled and acts as a timer. You simply program each side to a different task and tip it… Read More
from TechCrunch
The top startup accelerators have a history of seeing the future in ideas that sounded silly at the time. After all, who would have foreseen billion-dollar businesses based on renting your air mattress to strangers, or shopping for their groceries? So when prestigious accelerators invest around common themes, it’s worth taking note of what’s resonating. Read More
from TechCrunch
The founder of one of Silicon Valley’s most famous flameouts, anonymous social app Secret, is the new product lead for Postmates’ app. After Secret shut down and gave investors back their money, David Byttow went on to raise a $1 million seed round from Index to launch a blog publishing tool for enterprises called Bold.
Today Bold was acqhired by Postmates, Byttow confirmed to… Read More
from TechCrunch
In a slightly surprising move, Pinterest raised $150 million from private investors this week. Why the firm may have wanted the cash isn’t too hard to understand. When the markets offer you lots of cash on good terms, you tend to say yes. But let’s explore the round for a minute. Read More
from TechCrunch
SiriusXM just announced they will be investing $480M in cash into Pandora, which will give them a ~16% stake in the company on an as-converted basis. The investment will come in the form of newly-issued Series A convertible preferred Pandora stock. $172.5M of the preferred stock was purchased upon execution of the deal, and the balance will be bought at a second closing. Separately,… Read More
from TechCrunch
Milk deliveries may not sound like an industry in need of disruption, but that’s exactly what one startup in India is working to do. Supr Daily — the company in question — graduated the Y Combinator accelerator program this year and now it has raised $1.5 million from a range of investors to expand its service. The Supr Daily service is designed to bring formality and order… Read More
from TechCrunch