Category: Startups

In the early 2000s, actor Joseph Gordon-Levitt was frustrated with the roles he was being offered. Instead of starring in critically acclaimed indies, he was typecast as “the funny kid on TV” due to roles like Tommy from “3rd Rock from the Sun.” So like anyone who matured alongside the

“KP used to be a small team doing hands-on company building. We’re moving away from being this institution with multiple products and really just focusing on early-stage venture capital,” Kleiner Perkins partner Ilya Fushman tells me. Indeed, 47 years after its founding, the storied venture fund is going “back to

Houzz, a $4 billion-valued home improvement startup that recently laid off 10 percent of its staff, has admitted a data breach. A reader contacted TechCrunch on Thursday with a copy of an email sent by the company. It doesn’t say much — such as when the breach happened, or if a

The founders of Dadi — pronounced daddy — think men are in need of a wake-up call. “Men [have] a biological clock just like women, which is something that people don’t talk about,” Dadi co-founder and chief executive officer Tom Smith told TechCrunch. “Infertility isn’t a women’s issue; It’s both

At the end of last year, Grand Central Tech announced plans to work with the Milstein real estate family to transform a midtown Manhattan high-rise into a tech hub called Company. And startups remain an important part of the mix — in fact, Company is unveiling a list of 20

It’s been just about a year since the relaunch of WeWork Labs, an accelerator-type program operating under the WeWork umbrella. Since then, it’s grown to 37 locations in 22 cities. And it’s truly international, operating in 12 countries, including Brazil, China, Germany and India. These Labs offices are often —

If you are a web developer, you know how complex many of the traditional web content management systems have been. One of the big problems has been managing the underlying infrastructure for the system. Cosmic JS, a member of the Winter 2019 Y Combinator class, wants to simplify that by

Sibjeet Mahapatra Contributor Share on Twitter Sib Mahapatra is a writer and co-founder of Bureau, an end-to-end office furniture startup in NYC. More posts by this contributor VR, presence and the case of the missing killer app The bull case for Snapchat When considering the structural impact of technology companies

Nine years after launching its online magazine, and three years after diversifying into the subscription box business, FabFitFun has raised $80 million in a growth round of funding, led by Kleiner Perkins, with participation from its previous investors Upfront Ventures and NEA.  The Los Angeles-based company has steadily expanded its

Telecom company Altice is about to close a significant investment in French startup Molotov — the two companies have entered into exclusive negotiations. While terms of the deal are undisclosed, Altice should end up with a majority stake in Molotov for hundreds of millions of euros. This is an interesting

Knotch announced yesterday that it has raised $25 million in Series B funding. The round was led by New Enterprise Associates, with NEA’s Hilarie Koplow-McAdams joining the Knotch board of directors. Rob Norman, the former chief digital officer of ad giant GroupM is also joining the board. “Brands have a

Game engine maker Unity believes voice communications are going to grow to become a critical part of gaming across platforms and it’s buying one of the top companies in the space to bolster what its customers can build on the its platform. Unity has acquired Vivox, a company that powers

Hims, known by many for its phallic New York subway advertisements, has raised an additional $100 million in venture capital funding on a pre-money valuation of $1 billion. The round was first reported by Recode and confirmed to TechCrunch by sources with knowledge of the deal. A growth-stage investor has led

The Munchery saga continues. In a new class-action lawsuit, former Munchery facilities worker Joshua Philips is claiming the startup owes him and 250 other employees 60 days’ wages, citing The Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act, a U.S. labor law that requires employers with an excess of 100 employees to give

Parsley Health has just opened up a new, fully redesigned space on Fifth Avenue in New York City, marking the first true Parsley Health Center. Since launch, the startup has been operating out of clinics in New York, San Francisco and Los Angeles. But TechCrunch got the chance to check

Few issues divide the tech community quite like privacy. Much of Silicon Valley’s wealth has been built on data-driven advertising platforms, and yet, there remain constant concerns about the invasiveness of those platforms. Such concerns have intensified in just the last few weeks as France’s privacy regulator placed a record

It was a tough week. Journalists around the U.S. were hit hard by layoffs, from HuffPost to BuzzFeed News to Verizon Media Group, which owns this very site. The government entered day 35 of the shutdown before President Donald Trump agreed to a short-term deal to reopen it for three

Funding will get you a long way, but people, at the end of the day, are the key to a successful business. The Predictive Index, which develops behavioral and cognitive employee assessments, has raised a $50 million round of growth-stage capital from venture capital firm General Catalyst to help companies choose

San Jose cannabis company Caliva is proving that weed’s still hot, even as some markets cool off. The company is announcing a $75 million round of investment that includes participation from former Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz and football legend Joe Montana . If that pair seems unlikely, it just goes

When one food delivery startup fails, another gets funded. Chowbus, an Asian food ordering platform headquartered in Chicago, has brought in a $4 million “seed” funding led by Greycroft Partners and FJ Labs, with participation from Hyde Park Angels and Fika Ventures. The startup, aware of the challenges that plague startups in this space, says offering exclusive

Swarm Technologies is one of several companies looking to populate low Earth orbit with communications satellites, setting itself apart with the sheer smallness of its devices — and of course with the notoriety of having defied the FCC and earned a fine. But investors are bullish, and the company has

MaaS Global, the company behind the all-in-one mobility app Whim, which offers a subscription service for public transportation, ridesharing, bike rentals, scooter rentals, taxis or car rentals, will be making its U.S. debut later this year. The company will choose its American launch city from Austin, Boston, Chicago, Dallas and

Okay, I’ll admit it: Sometimes, I write stories because I think they’re going to be popular. And sometimes, those stories fall flat anyway. It makes sense — both on a cosmic level, because life isn’t fair, but also in the more specific sense that some topics are simply over-covered. Yes,

People are increasingly interested in finding a way to participate in the cannabis industry, and for good reason. It’s growing like a weed (yes, we said it). According to a San Francisco-based research company, Grand View Research, the global legal marijuana market is expected to reach $146.4 billion by the