Startups

New Year’s cybersecurity resolutions that every startup should keep

Security /

As regular readers of TechCrunch will know, 2024 was — much like the years before it — full of data breaches, ransomware attacks, and mass-hacks exploiting some of the most trivial software vulnerabilities. Even the most well-resourced organizations failed to keep hackers out of their systems over the past twelve months. AT&T experienced its second […]

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From AI agents to enterprise budgets, 20 VCs share their predictions on enterprise tech in 2025

Enterprise /

While AI is lauded by some as the biggest technological breakthrough since the industrial revolution, enterprises — arguably the tech’s biggest potential customer base — have been slow to adopt AI. While some investors predicted that 2024 would be the year we’d start to see more AI adoption by enterprises, that didn’t play out as

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Carta is making it too difficult to cancel subscriptions, some founders say

Startups /

Running a startup can be expensive, requiring a multitude of different subscriptions.  Cap table management software, which helps founders organize their funding, can cost thousands of dollars a year. San Francisco-based Carta is the market leader in this industry. But some startup founders say Carta is making it too hard to cancel their subscriptions. The

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The founders of SlideShare are making sharing docs more social with their new platform, Jaunt

Startups /

When SlideShare, the presentation-sharing service acquired by Scribd, launched in 2006, generative AI technology was significantly less advanced than it is today, and social networking platforms were just beginning to take off. Recognizing the evolution of AI and the increasing desire for innovative ways to share documents, the founders of SlideShare—Amit Ranjan (COO), Jonathan Boutelle

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Trump’s proposed university endowment tax could hurt funding, VC warns

Venture /

Some VCs are looking at the Trump administration’s proposed massive tax increase on university endowments with alarm, warns Ann Miura-Ko, co-founder at Floodgate Partners. “There is a proposal right now to take the endowment tax from 1.4 percent to 35 percent and most people would say, well endowments are super rich, why do we care?  Well, they

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200 VCs wanted to get into Lumen Orbit’s $11M seed round

AI /

Lumen Orbit, a startup looking to build data centers in space, was able to close its recent seed round in mere days amid intense investor interest. The Redmond, Washington-based company closed on a $11 million seed round at a $40 million valuation, confirming prior TechCrunch reporting that the company had raised a competitive double-digit round

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Mantel’s app lets collectors show off their sports cards and other treasures

Apps /

Back in February, Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian teamed up with Brent Montgomery (“Pawn Stars” producer) and Evan Parker (former general manager at The Athletic) to launch Mantel, a social network allowing collectors to share their latest finds, such as sports cards, TCGs (trading card games), comic books, coins, stamps, sneakers, watches, and more.  Initially available

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ElevenLabs’ AI voice generation ‘very likely’ used in a Russian influence operation

AI /

Generative AI has a plethora of well-documented misuses, from making up academic papers to copying artists. And now, it appears to be cropping up in state influence operations. One recent campaign was “very likely” helped by commercial AI voice generation products, including tech publicly released by the hot startup ElevenLabs, according to a recent report

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