Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines. Natasha and Danny and Alex and Grace were all here to chat through the week’s biggest tech happenings. It was yet another crazy week, but we did our best to get through as much of it as we could. Here’s the rundown, in case --> READ MORE
The man who arguably ushered in the current SPAC rush with the merger of Virgin Galactic with his Social Capital Hedosophia holding company has divested the remainder of his personal holdings in the space tourism company. Chamath Palihapitiya, who serves as the chairman of Virgin Galactic’s board, still holds 6.2% ownership in the company in --> READ MORE
Insurance agents spend hours handling paperwork and grabbing client information over the phone. A new seed-stage startup, InsurGrid, has developed a software solution to help ease the process, and make it easier for agents to serve existing clients — and secure new ones. InsurGrid gives agents a personalized platform to collect information from clients, such --> READ MORE
Dija, the London-based grocery delivery startup, is officially launching today and confirming that it raised £20 million in seed funding in December — a round that we first reported was partially closed the previous month. Backing the company is Blossom Capital, Creandum and Index Ventures, with Dija seemingly able to raise pre-launch. In fact, there --> READ MORE
Square buys a majority stake in Jay-Z’s Tidal, WhatsApp improves its desktop app and Hopin raises even more funding. This is your Daily Crunch for March 4, 2021. The big story: Square acquires Tidal Square announced this morning that it has purchased a majority stake in Tidal, the music streaming service founded by Jay-Z. It --> READ MORE
When Okta announced that it was acquiring Auth0 yesterday for $6.5 billion, the deal raised eyebrows. After all, it’s a substantial amount of money for one identity and access management (IAM) company to pay to buy another, similar entity. But the deal ultimately brings together two companies that come at identity from different sides of the --> READ MORE
Kara Nortman Contributor Share on Twitter Kara Nortman is a partner at Upfront Ventures. More posts by this contributor Consumer-oriented investors may have an edge investing in digital health >>>> gd2md-html alert: inline image link in generated source and store images to your server. NOTE: Images in exported zip file from Google Docs may not --> READ MORE
For founder Najette Fellache, coming to the Bay Area a few years ago from Nantes, France was a way to grow a company she’d founded and which was already beginning to count major U.S. corporations like GE, Tesla, Amazon, and Medtronics as customers. What that six-year-old outfit, Speach, sells is essentially knowledge-sharing between colleagues via --> READ MORE
It’s not uncommon these days to hear of U.S.-based investors backing Latin American startups. But it’s not every day that we hear of Latin American VCs investing in U.S.-based startups. Berkeley-based fintech Flourish has raised $1.5 million in a funding round led by Brazilian venture capital firm Canary. Founded by Pedro Moura and Jessica Eting, the --> READ MORE
Maintaining company culture when the majority of staff is working remotely is a challenge for every organization — big and small. This was an issue, even before COVID. But it’s become an even bigger problem with so many employees working from home. Employers have to be careful that workers don’t feel disconnected and isolated from --> READ MORE
Recent Comments