Z Fellows wants to give you $10K to launch a crypto startup

Capital may help someone take the jump into entrepreneurship, but what about the activation energy to let them think that big in the first place? To Cory Levy, the latter has always been more important. The entrepreneur behind First Text, a low-friction service that connects founders to investors, launched Z Fellows last year to test […]

Former Lyft CSO and Freestyle Capital co-founder team up to back climate tech startups

When it comes to saving the planet, Raj Kapoor, Lyft’s former chief strategy officer and head of business, doesn’t think asking consumers (or the government) to change their ways is an effective strategy. Instead, he and Josh Felser, the co-founder of Freestyle Capital and a serial entrepreneur, are betting that the future of climate tech […]

Sequoia provides founders with key insights on launching, building and fundraising

Sequoia hosted a private, sponsored AMA for founders in Startup Battlefield and Startup Alley at the virtual Disrupt SF last month. Stephanie Zhan, Konstantine Buhler, George Robson and Josephine Chen shared some key insights and best practices. It was good stuff, so we wanted to share. We took some highlights from the session and chatted […]

Announcing the Startup Battlefield companies pitching at TechCrunch Disrupt 2021

Today, TechCrunch is excited to announce the 20 startups pitching on stage in this year’s Startup Battlefield. Selected from the most competitive batch in TC history, selected founders from across the globe will pitch on the virtual stage at TechCrunch Disrupt 2021. Startups will be competing for $100,000 in equity-free prize money and the attention […]

Our favorite startups from YC’s Summer 21 Demo Day, Part 2

From beaming actors into the class room to plucking things out of space, the second day of Y Combinator’s S21 Demo Day was a fresh snapshot of what nearly 200 startup teams believe is the future of innovation. Yesterday, the TechCrunch team covered the first half of this batch, as well as the startups with one-minute […]

Our favorite startups from YC’s Summer 21 Demo Day, Part 1

Y Combinator kicked off its fourth-ever virtual Demo Day today, revealing the first-half of its nearly 400 company batch. The presentation, YC’s biggest yet, offers a snapshot into where innovation is heading, from not-so-simple seaweed to a Clearco for creators. The TechCrunch team stuck to its tradition of covering every single company live (but, you […]

BoldVoice wants to help nonnative English speakers find (and flaunt) their voices

When Anada Lakra and Ilya Usorov first moved to the United States, they struggled to find their voices. They both knew and understood English, but when it came time to speak up, their accents became a hurdle. Usorov, for example, watched his Russian-born parents struggle to advocate for themselves, which limited work opportunities. While Lakra, […]