Istanbul has become a city to watch when it comes to casual gaming startups, boosted by the likes of Peak (acquired by Zynga for $1.8 billion) and Dream (valued at $1 billion in a funding round last year). Now, a new startup is announcing a major round of funding to make its own mark on […]
Spain’s Payflow, a salary advance startup, banks $9.1M to fuel a super app growth strategy
Barcelona-based Payflow, a YC-backed salary-advance fintech with ambitions to evolve into a neobank, has banked a $9.1 million Series A funding round — bringing its total raised since January 2020, when the business was founded, to $13.6M. Investors in the round include a mix of national and international funds, including Spain’s Seaya Ventures, a new […]
Software stocks give up even more ground
Quick blog here to update you on some pretty important movements in the market. Today, in a nasty day for stocks generally, shares of software and cloud companies took a pounding. In numerical terms, the Nasdaq Composite lost 2.51%, per CNBC data. That’s a very bad day for a huge, critical category of publicly traded […]
Dear VCs: If you want startup prices to come down, stop paying higher prices
That the venture capital market is incredibly exuberant at the moment is not news. Data from 2021 paints the picture of a startup fundraising game at peak velocity, with more capital, unicorns and nine-figure deals than ever. And let me tell you, some venture capitalists are tired of it. PitchBook has a post up detailing […]
African tech took center stage in 2021
Two years ago, the African tech ecosystem saw newfound attention from global players that translated to the continent’s best year of receiving venture capital. From varying sources, it is estimated up to $2 billion went into African tech startups in 2019. With high-profile visits from the most famous Jacks (Ma and Dorsey), a long-awaited first […]
Patreon CPO says the company will double in size in 2022
Creator monetization startups are cropping up left and right as the tech world embraces the fast-growing creator economy. But Patreon, founded in 2013, has been around since before words like “influencer” were in our vocabulary — back when “Tik Tok” was a Kesha song, rather than the social platform that everyone is trying to emulate. […]
Gift Guide: Extremely Online books
If you can’t read a good book without stopping every few pages to tweet about it, you might be what we call Extremely Online. You unabashedly distinguish between real life and digital life by using phrases like IRL versus URL, you disabled the Screen Time app on your iPhone because you don’t need that kind of judgement. Maybe you’re so online that it’s your job to write about social media, and even when you’re not working, you’re still thinking about the vice grip that Meta has on your life. Okay, that last one hit a bit too close to home.
Voly raises $13M led by Sequoia to deliver instant groceries in Australia
The trend that is instant grocery delivery — online ordering of essentials with your purchases being delivered to you in under an hour — continues to proliferate across multiple markets, and in the latest development, Sequoia is leading an investment in one out of Australia. Voly, a five-month-old Sydney-based startup that offers thousands of SKUs […]
TechCrunch+ roundup: Less VC for SV, 2022 marketing predictions, GTM research strategies
The fact that the Bay Area’s share of startup funding is shrinking shouldn’t be cause for alarm — it’s good news for the entire country.
The ‘art’ of VC startup valuations is a forgery
We pretend the startup has value so that the startup’s team is motivated and everyone involved has a chance to win.