Skio, a startup that aims to take the pain out of selling subscriptions for brands on Shopify, has raised $3.7 million in a seed funding round. Kennan Davison, an engineer who previously worked at Hulu and Pinterest, founded the startup in April. He describes Skio as a fintech and an infrastructure company as a pivot […]
This Dapper Labs-backed company is turning Dr. Seuss characters into NFT trading cards
Back in 2012, a Brooklyn-based mobile apps development startup was hired to do a job by the 83-year-old trading card company Topps. For that Brooklyn outfit’s president, Erich Wood, a UCLA graduate who’d studied economics and loved trading cards, the opportunity not only sounded fun but would change his trajectory. At the time, Topps had […]
Serial fintech founder raises $20M for Ant Money to make micro-investing even more accessible
Serial fintech entrepreneur Walter Cruttenden founded Acorns with his son, Jeff, in 2012 with the goal of helping low- and middle-income households invest and save responsibly. The pair wanted to simplify investing for the millions that have trouble getting started or continuing to invest. Then in 2018, Walter went live with a new company — […]
The investment manager of the future
What does an investment management firm look like when it’s redesigned based on first principles and based on the true “jobs to be done” of an investment manager?
Array Ventures raises $56M to back tech-heavy enterprise software
Shruti Gandhi wants to clear up a misconception in first-check fundraising: Every founder doesn’t need their early-stage investors to be a shoulder for them, they just need their investor to understand their business in a way that others don’t. Most of the entrepreneurs in her portfolio for Array Ventures, a fund she started five years […]
The eVTOL take-off: Four trends that shaped 2021
Billions of dollars, dozens of deals and one legal battle: The year in eVTOL was an unforgettable one, with developers picking up the pace even as the larger aviation sector was busy slowly recovering from the fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic. Below, we catch up with leading analysts and investors to identify the top trends […]
Calibrate Ventures raises $97M for second fund targeting AI, automation
With capital flowing freely lately, managing partners Jason Schoettler and Kevin Dunlap shared some insights on what it takes to win deals these days.
Venture firm Chapter One, focused on all things web3, draws backing from big-name VC firms
Jeff Morris Jr., founder and managing partner of the L.A.-based venture firm Chapter One, just closed a $40 million early-stage fund to focus on web3 investments, and he’s in the process of raising a separate, $20 million opportunity fund. Even in this go-go market, where digital assets are suddenly top of mind for everyone, the […]
Nigerian mobility-tech startup MAX bags $31 million in Series B round, set to expand across Africa, build EV infrastructure
Nigerian mobility tech startup Metro Africa Xpress Inc. (MAX) is planning to enter more markets across Africa as it races towards formalizing the continent’s transportation sector after securing $31 million in Series B funding. The startup told TechCrunch that it will use the funding to enter Ghana and Egypt by the end of the first […]
South Park Commons, an “anti incubator” founded by early FB and Dropbox engineers, gains momentum
When South Park Commons (SPC), a community of tens of engineers in San Francisco’s South Park neighborhood, came together, it mostly flew under the radar, save for a New York Times profile in 2017, a year after it was formed. Founded by Facebook’s first female engineer, Ruchi Sanghvi, she explained at the time that her […]