Venture

a16z’s American Dynamism team launches program to introduce technical minds to VC

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Andreessen Horowitz’s American Dynamism fund has established a new fellowship program aimed at introducing top engineers and technologists to venture investing, a move that could help the firm identify less obvious sources for VC talent.  The American Dynamism fund launched in 2023 with the broad aim of supporting companies building in the nation’s interest across […]

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Zen Educate raises $37M and acquires Aquinas Education as it tries to address the teacher shortage

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Zen Educate, an online marketplace that connects schools with teachers, has raised $37 million in a Series B round of funding. The raise comes amid a growing teacher shortage crisis both sides of the pond, with a recent report from ADP Research Institute noting that the global pandemic exacerbated the existing supply/demand imbalance due to

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Contour Venture Partners, an early investor in Datadog and Movable Ink, has raised $42M for its fifth fund

Venture /

Longtime New York-based seed investor, Contour Venture Partners, is making progress on its latest flagship fund. The firm closed on $42 million, raised from 64 backers, for Contour Venture Partners Fund V, according to an SEC filing from May 17. The firm is targeting $90 million for its fifth flagship fund and started fundraising in

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SeekOut, a recruiting startup last valued at $1.2 billion, lays off 30% of its workforce

Venture /

SeekOut, an 8-year-old recruiting startup that uses AI to find candidates, has cut about 30% of its workforce on Thursday, TechCrunch has learned. “Lately, we have been spending roughly $2 to earn $1, and this last fiscal year, we incurred significant cash burn,” SeekOut’s CEO Anoop Gupta and CTO Aravind Bala wrote in a letter

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OpenseedVC, which backs operators in Africa and Europe starting their companies, reaches first close of $10M fund

Venture /

Founder-market fit is one of the most crucial factors in a startup’s success, and operators (someone involved in the day-to-day operations of a startup) turned founders have an almost unfair advantage in finding that fit. Data shows that a lack of expertise and business acumen in founders contributes to failed VC investments. The same principle applies

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I’m rooting for Melinda French Gates to fix tech’s broken ‘brilliant jerk’ culture

Venture /

On Monday, Melinda French Gates resigned from the philanthropy organization she ran with ex-husband Bill Gates. That she left is less surprising than that she stayed as long as she did. The couple divorced in 2021. In August 2021, the charity organization told CNN that it was doing a two-year trial period to see if

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Seraphim’s latest space accelerator welcomes nine companies

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U.K.-based Seraphim Space is spinning up its 13th accelerator program, with nine participating companies working on a range of tech from propulsion to in-space manufacturing and space situational awareness. The intense 12-week program is designed to get seed and Series A companies “investment ready,” the firm says, by providing specialist mentorship, networking opportunities and intensive

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Agora raises $34M Series B to keep building the Carta for real estate

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Since he was very young, Bar Mor knew that he would inevitably do something with real estate. His family was involved in all types of real estate projects, from ground-up construction to managing residential, commercial and retail properties. But unlike his parents, Mor also had a passion for technology. His interest in tech was reinforced

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Sigma is building a suite of collaborative data analytics tools

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In 2014, Jason Frantz and Rob Woollen co-founded Sigma Computing, a platform that overlays data stored in data platforms such as Snowflake and Google BigQuery with a spreadsheet-like interface for data visualization and analytics. With Sigma, the two former software engineers sought to tackle what they perceived as the intractable data challenges faced by large

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Startup Blueprint: TC Disrupt 2024 Builders Stage agenda sneak peek!

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TechCrunch Disrupt, our flagship startup event held annually in San Francisco, is back on October 28-30 — and you can expect a bustling crowd of thousands of startup enthusiasts. Exciting news! We’re thrilled to unveil the near-complete agenda for the Builders Stage, the culmination of months of hard work. This is just one of six

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