AvantStay, a platform for kitting out — and then renting out — high-end vacation rental homes, raises $160M

Another travel startup that found itself scrambling to pivot as the COVID-19 pandemic took off is now announcing a huge round of funding after finding its feet and proving that it can grow, even under adverse circumstances. AvantStay — which has built a platform where it decorates and then lists properties owned by others for […]

RentTheRunway-style UK fashion rental marketplace HURR raises $5.4M round led by Octopus

HURR — a “RentTheRunway” style UK fashion rental marketplace – has raised $5.4M in a seed funding round led by European VC firm, Octopus Ventures. Also participating was Ascension and D4 Ventures, among others. HURR launched in 2019 and has a hybrid business model combining peer-to-peer fashion rentals, direct partnerships with fashion outlets, and a […]

Soveren launches from stealth with $6.5M seed funding to automate GDPR compliance

Soveren, a London-based startup that automates the detection of privacy risks to help organizations comply with GDPR and CCPA, has launched out of stealth with $6.5 million in seed funding. The company analyzes real-time data flows inside an organizations’ infrastructure to discover personal data and detect privacy risks to make it easier for CTOs and […]

Reid Hoffman on the evolution of ‘blitzscaling’ amid the pandemic

“Blitzscaling itself isn’t the goal,” said Hoffman. “Blitzscaling is being inefficient; it’s spending capital inefficiently and hiring inefficiently; it’s being uncertain about your business model; and those are not good things.”

EU considers single rules for regulating vacation rental platforms

European Union lawmakers are consulting on how to regulate the short term rental market across the bloc — asking whether a single set of pan-EU rules or something more locally flavored is needed to rule over platforms like Airbnb. The Commission says it wants to support an expansion of competition and players in the sector […]

Ex-Apple designer’s ultra-premium audio hardware startup Syng raises $48.75 million

Audio startup Syng has been building on quite a bit more hype than the average fresh hardware startup, largely because of the team behind it. Founder and CEO Chris Stringer was Jony Ive’s first hire at Apple and worked at the company for 21 years. In an interview, Stringer referred to the first time he […]

India’s Oyo to file for $1 billion IPO

Indian budget hotel chain startup Oyo is looking to file for an initial public offering as soon as next week, people familiar with the matter told TechCrunch, joining a handful of firms in the world’s second-largest market that are working to explore the public markets. The seven-year-old startup, founded by 27-year-old Ritesh Agarwal, is planning […]