Startups
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These are the US startups that Russian investors are backing
A taxi-hailing app. A transplant device developer. An online mortgage provider. Those businesses may have little in common, but one shared thread is that U.S. startups in these sectors have all secured large funding rounds led by Russia-based investors. They’re not alone. Over the past seven years, Russia-based e investors have participated in more than 300 funding rounds for… Read More
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Uber ‘Express POOL’ offers the cheapest fare if you’ll walk a little
Uber’s found a way to shave another 25 percent or so off the price of a ride. Uber Express POOL asks you to walk up to a few blocks to your pickup and destination before and after the ride in exchange for the cheapest fare out of all of Uber’s options. Bolt Threads is raising $106 million from Foundation Capital and Formation 8
Our spidey senses are tingling over here. According to an SEC filing, TechCrunch has learned Bolt Threads, the biotech company spinning microbes into spider silk, is raising a whopping $106 million in Series D financing. Bolt Threads has been on a meteoric rise since it first told TC about its ambitious endeavor to make spider silk, a material stronger than teflon but softer than a cloud. Read More
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Pinterest now lets you create sections within your boards to further tidy up ideas
Pinterest serves as a pretty good place for users who are looking to plan large-scale projects, like outfits for big events, home design or even life moments like a wedding or a 50th birthday party — and now the company is looking to make that even easier by introducing a more powerful way to keep those batches of ideas, well, tidy. Read More
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Conversive helps businesses build the virtual equivalent of face-to-face conversations
If you’ve ever interacted with a chatbot and felt like there was just something missing, the founders of a new startup called Conversive think they know the missing element — face-to-face interaction. And that, essentially, is what they’re trying to enable with their technology. Conversive customers can create a character (animated or recorded human) to represent them, place… Read More
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Elastic acquires search startup Swiftype
Swiftype isn’t just a startup that we write about — we also use the technology to provide site search on TechCrunch itself. Now it’s being acquired by Elastic, the company behind the open source technology Elasticsearch. It turns out the two companies are already connected, because Swiftype uses Elasticsearch for indexing and storing its search content. In fact, Swiftype CTO… Read More
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Uber gives top riders a 24/7 ‘Premium Support’ hotline
If something scary or infuriating happens with your Uber, sending an email to support doesn’t always cut it. And if you’ve ridden thousands of miles with Uber and paid them boatloads over the years, you might expect better service. You’re always just a few taps away from switching to Lyft, right? This week, TechCrunch spotted Uber testing new “Premium Support”… Read More
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BitTorrent inventor announces eco-friendly bitcoin competitor Chia
A bitcoin transaction wastes as much electricity as it takes to power an American home for a week, and legendary coder Bram Cohen wants to fix that. Cohen has started a new company called Chia Network that will launch a cryptocurrency based on proofs of time and storage rather than bitcoin’s electricity-burning proofs of work. Read More
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Smart trucking startup CargoX raises $20M
CargoX announced today that it has raised $20 million in Series C funding led by Goldman Sachs. The startup is currently focused on the Brazilian market, where it connects businesses that need to ship something with drivers who have excess capacity in their trucks. The goal is to help truckers make more money while reducing shipping costs for businesses. Read More
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What happens when you sell your startup?
This is the final installment in the series “A Startup Takes Flight.” We started by creating a company — the Internet of Wings, a provider of drone-delivered chicken sandwiches that pivoted into general food delivery — and examined some of the most common financing terms entrepreneurs and VC investors discuss. It’s time to get our investors a liquidity event… Read More
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