‘The companies that best meet their customers’ needs always end up winning’ Oxx, a European venture capital firm co-founded by Richard Anton and Mikael Johnsson, this month announced the closing of its debut fund of $133 million to back “Europe’s most promising SaaS companies” at Series A and beyond. Launched in 2017 and headquartered in…
As streaming services like HBO Max, Netflix and Disney+ plus vie for subscription dollars and YouTube, Xumo, Kanopy, Tubi TV, Vudu and Pluto TV try to take more ad revenue from traditional television, entertainment for kids — and the tech tools that manage their screen time — are becoming more important. On the streaming side,…
[Editor’s note: Want to get this weekly review of news that startups can use by email? Just subscribe here.] How well do Robinhood’s financials stack up against incumbent online brokerages? While we wait for the seven-year-old company’s long-planned IPO, Alex Wilhelm examined Morgan Stanley’s big $13 billion purchase of E-Trade for fresh data comparison points. Robinhood…
Financial services startups raised less money in 2019 than they did in 2018 as VC firms looked to back late stage firms and focused on developing markets, a new report has revealed. According to research firm CB Insights’ annual report published this week, fintech startups across the world raised $33.9 billion* in total last year…
A few days ago, Andreessen Horowitz’s Martin Casado and Matt Bornstein published an interesting piece digging into the world of artificial intelligence (AI) startups, and, more specifically, how those companies perform as businesses. Core to the argument presented is that while founders and investors are wagering “that AI businesses will resemble traditional software companies,” the…
We’ve been dropping into the Australian startup scene increasingly over the years as the ecosystem has been building at an increasingly faster pace, most notably at our own TechCrunch Battlefield Australia in 2017. Further evidence that the scene is growing has come recently in the shape of the Pause Fest conference in Melbourne. This event…
[Editor’s note: Want to get this weekly review of news that startups can use by email? Just subscribe here.] My colleague Alex Wilhelm has been researching the companies that are both getting impressive valuations and also generating annual recurring revenues of around $100 million on more. These are the sorts of companies that any savvy…
[Editor’s note: Want to get this weekly review of news that startups can use? Just subscribe here.] Asana may get more attention than the average SaaS company due to the Facebook pedigrees and outspoken views of its founders, but in practice it’s a low-profile, cash-efficient machine. Today, the productivity toolmaker does not need to raise…
When Uber and Lyft went public, it wasn’t the drivers who got rich — it was the executives, investors and some early employees. In an era when it has become clear that tech executives and investors are frequently the only ones who’ll reap rewards for a company’s success, cooperative startups are getting more attention. Depending…
Maybe ‘tech-enabled’ is good enough for public markets? Everybody’s talking about revenues after WeWork, but maybe you still don’t need to have all the right numbers in place to achieve a strong IPO? That’s the initial takeaway Alex Wilhelm has after One Medical’s successful debut this week. One might think it looks like a tech-enabled…
