More than 100 VCs, including Reid Hoffman, Vinod Khosla and Mark Cuban have pledged to vote for Vice President Kamala Harris in the upcoming U.S. presidential election. Mobilizing under the group VCsForKamala, the VCs are also soliciting donations for Harris’ campaign. But the organizers say the effort isn’t meant to align with any one political […]
Over 100 VCs pledge support for Kamala Harris Read More »
Farms produce a lot of data. From machines to irrigation systems, farms generate a lot of information that could be helpful to both them and the companies that serve them. Traditionally this data has been siloed across different formats making it hard to read and build off of. Leaf is trying to change that. New
Leaf helps farms decipher the troves of data they generate Read More »
Europe is routinely castigated by tech industry observers for having too little “growth capital” funds, and, compared to the U.S., that’s true. That said, it is nowhere near nonexistent on this front. To wit: Growth equity investor Kennet has just announced it’s raised €266 million for its largest fund to date, Kennet VI, which is
Hey, there ARE growth funds in Europe — Kennet raises $287M for its largest fund to date Read More »
Government websites aren’t known for cutting-edge tech. GovWell co-founder and CTO Ben Cohen discovered this while trying to help his dad, a contractor, apply for building permits. Cohen worked as a full stack engineer at Uber during the day and faxed documents for building permits at night. The difference in tech was stark. Years later,
GovWell is bringing automation and efficiency to local governments Read More »
Venture capital funding has never been robust for women or Black and brown founders. Alongside Crunchbase, we’ve been tracking funding levels to pinpoint moments of progress and regression for marginalized entrepreneurs. For example, Black founders saw record amounts of funding in the bull year that was 2021, but that amount dipped substantially as the market
Stay up-to-date on the amount of venture dollars going to underrepresented founders Read More »
Farmers have got to do something about pests. But nobody really likes the idea of using more chemical pesticides. Thomas Laurent’s company, Micropep, thinks the answer might already be in the plants themselves. Micropep is exploring how naturally occurring compounds, known as micropeptides, might work as an entirely new class of pesticides. If the startup
Micropep taps tiny proteins to make pesticides safer Read More »
After hearing that a U.S. Navy submarine ran into an underwater mountain, Joe Wolfel was surprised to find out just how little both government and commercial organizations knew about the ocean floor. It stuck with him throughout his time in the Navy and years later he launched a company to try to fix it. Wolfel
Terradepth wants to map the rest of the ocean floor Read More »
Nathan Rosenberg, the founder of farm automation platform Farmblox, said if there is one thing to know about trying to sell technology to farmers, it’s that you can’t tell them what to do. “[Farmers] are multigenerational,” Rosenberg told TechCrunch. “It is not a profession, it’s more a community, a way of life, and you need
Eric Zhu started building Aviato, an analytical platform for private market data, in a very typical place for an entrepreneur: the bathroom in his Carmel, Indiana, high school. Now the 17-year-old’s startup is emerging from stealth with $2.3 million in venture funding. Aviato tracks funding rounds and headcount, similar to competitors like Crunchbase and PitchBook, but
When Tade Oyerinde first set out to fundraise for his startup, Campus, a fully-accredited online community college, it was incredibly difficult. VCs have backed for-profit education companies in the past, including Coursera and Udacity, but backing a more traditional two-year college is different. Plus, he was looking for funds a few years ago when higher
Why it made sense for an online community college to raise venture capital Read More »
