Steve Case is no stranger to how policy can help aid innovation. His former company AOL would have been dead in the water if not for the Telecommunications Act of 1996, which required telecoms companies to open access to their tech. Now, Case is hoping the federal government will look to take the same stance […]
Golf has exploded in popularity in recent years thanks to the pandemic and the popularity of Netflix’s Full Swing documentary series. More than 531 million rounds of golf were played in the U.S. in 2023 alone, according to the National Golf Foundation. Because of this surge in interest, golfers are finding that nabbing a tee
Loop Golf looks to take the stress out of booking a tee time Read More »
StepStone raised the largest fund dedicated to investing in venture secondaries ever, the firm announced last week. This fundraise doesn’t just say a lot about StepStone’s venture secondaries investing prowess, but also about how LPs are thinking about the current venture market. The fund, StepStone VC Secondaries Fund VI, raised $3.3 billion. This marks a
Amazon says that it will commit up to $230 million to startups building generative AI-powered applications. The investment, roughly $80 million of which will fund Amazon’s second AWS Generative AI Accelerator program, aims to position AWS as an attractive cloud infrastructure choice for startups developing generative AI models to power their products, apps and services.
Amazon says it’ll spend $230 million on generative AI startups Read More »
Washington, D.C., may be the hub for legislation and regulation that affects startups, but many people in the city don’t know anything about one of the more prominent accelerators fueling the industry: Y Combinator. Speaking at a TechCrunch Strictly VC event on Tuesday evening, YC Head of Public Policy Luther Lowe said the startup incubator
DC’s political class doesn’t know Y Combinator exists, but it’s trying to change that Read More »
Dogs are the most popular pet in the U.S.: 65.1 million households have one, according to the American Pet Products Association. But while cats are not far off, with 46.5 million households with one, a lot of innovation in the pet category has focused exclusively on dogs. And even if the service serves both species,
When Bowery Capital general partner Loren Straub started talking to a startup from the latest Y Combinator accelerator batch a few months ago, she thought it was strange that the company didn’t have a lead investor for the round it was raising. Even stranger, the founders didn’t seem to be looking for one. She thought
In 2024, many Y Combinator startups only want tiny seed rounds — but there’s a catch Read More »
It’s been 20 years since Shira Yevin, the lead singer of punk band Shiragirl drove a pink RV into the Vans Warped Tour grounds, the now-defunct punk rock festival notorious for being male-dominated. In response to the festival’s lack of female-fronted bands, Yevin’s band crashed the festival and set up an impromptu all-female stage. This
When Alex Ewing was a kid growing up in Purcell, Oklahoma, he knew how close he was to home based on which billboards he could see out the car window. Now, as the CEO of OneScreen.ai, he’s helping startups like fintech Ramp and technical recruiter Karat advertise on billboards and beyond. “I think billboards are
OneScreen.ai brings startup ads to billboards and NYC’s subway Read More »
Welcome to TechCrunch Fintech! This week, we’re looking at the long-term implications of Synapse’s bankruptcy on the fintech sector, Majority’s impressive ARR milestone, and more! To get a roundup of TechCrunch’s biggest and most important fintech stories delivered to your inbox every Tuesday at 7:00 a.m. PT, subscribe here. The big story Last week, we
