Mallard Bay is the Airbnb for guided hunting and fishing
Americans spent more than $144.8 billion on fishing and hunting in 2022 alone, according to a survey by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Guided hunting and fishing excursions are…
Pornhub says, ‘Bad Texas! No smut for you!’
Welcome to Startups Weekly — your weekly recap of everything you can’t miss from the world of startups. Sign up here to get it in your inbox every Friday. Pornhub…
Pitch Deck Teardown: SuperScale’s $5.4M Series A deck
There are two industries that make a ton of money but they’re traditionally largely ignored by venture capital — movies and gaming. That comes as a bit of a surprise…
TipTop, the new app from Postmates’ founder and CEO, now lets you buy devices with trade-ins and cash
TipTop, the startup that offers instant cash for electronics, is launching TipTop Shop, a way for users to purchase and trade in devices. TipTop Shop builds on the success of…
Microbiome startups respond as industry is accused of ‘questionable practices’
The biotech sector has embraced the microbiome in recent years, a green field market powered by cheap genome sequencing and venture dollars, promising bespoke treatments for everything from gut troubles…
VCs will get liquidity in 2024 from the secondary market, not IPOs
If you asked a bunch of VCs at the end of 2023 if the IPO market would finally open again in 2024, most of them would have said yes. We…
Glacier is training AI-powered recycling robots
The future of recycling is here, and of course, it involves robots and artificial intelligence. Rebecca Hu, the co-founder of the robotics company Glacier, creates robots that help recycling plants…
Enterprise SaaS investment makes a comeback — but not where you’d expect
The global market for software is growing quickly. Gartner data indicates that software spend is the fastest-expanding segment of IT spend and that its pace of growth has accelerated in…
After losing access to Twitter’s API, Block Party pivots to privacy
Block Party, a startup developed by software engineer and tech diversity advocate Tracy Chou, was among the victims of Twitter’s (now X’s) API changes earlier this year, forcing it to…
Ready Player One creator debuts ‘Open,’ a metaverse battle royale experience
Earlier this year, Readyverse Studios – co-founded by blockchain tech company Futureverse and Ernest Cline, the mind behind the sci-fi franchise Ready Player One – announced “The Readyverse,” an interactive…
How many startups shut down last year compared to the year before? A lot.
Listen here or wherever you get your podcasts. Hello and welcome back to Equity, a podcast about the business of startups, where we unpack the numbers and nuance behind the headlines.…
Techstars’ $80M partnership with J.P. Morgan is on the rocks, employees say
During a Zoom meeting with her senior leaders last summer, Techstars CEO Maëlle Gavet sat at a table, an open notebook in front of her, a laptop to her side,…
The incumbents go shopping for startups
Welcome to Startups Weekly — your weekly recap of everything you can’t miss from the world of startups. Sign up here to get it in your inbox every Friday. This…
NFT fantasy sport startup Sorare lays off 13%, as web3 gaming sputters
Sorare is not completely shuttering its New York office but is shifting more employees to Paris. Web3-enabled fantasy sports platform Sorare laid off 22 employees based in its New York…
Deel acquires Africa’s PaySpace, says it’s crossed $500M in ARR
Deel is on an acquisition march. On Tuesday, the HR startup announced it is acquiring African-based payroll and HR software and services company PaySpace in a deal that marks its…
VC Trae Stephens says he has a bunker (and much more) in talk about Founders Fund and Anduril
Last night, for an evening hosted by StrictlyVC, this editor sat down with Trae Stephens, a former government intelligence analyst turned early Palantir employee turned investor at Founders Fund, where…
Is there anything AI can’t do?
Welcome to Startups Weekly — your weekly recap of everything you can’t miss from the world of startups. Sign up here to get it in your inbox every Friday. I…
Ariel Kaye built a brand that’s outlasted the DTC Boom
It’s no surprise that after ten years, Parachute, the home lifestyle brand, stands as the dust settles from the direct-to-consumer boom. Founded by Ariel Kaye in 2012, Parachute has developed…
Reddit should go public at $5B, according to secondary data
Reddit filed its S-1 last week and is set to take the bold step of being the first venture-backed public listing of 2024. If successful, Reddit has the power to…
Silence Laboratories, a cryptographic security startup, secures funding
Silence Laboratories, a startup that builds infrastructure using multiparty computation (MPC) to help enterprises keep data private and safe, said it has raised a $4.1 million funding round. Pi Ventures and Kira…
Bluesky snags former Twitter/X Trust & Safety exec cut by Musk
Emerging decentralized social network and X rival Bluesky has just landed a notable former Twitter leader as its new Head of Trust and Safety. On Wednesday, the company announced it…
Why VCs are investing in startups that help other startups shut down
In one of the VC world’s greatest ironies, investors have lately been clamoring to back startups that are helping other startups shut down. So whether a VC-backed startup is succeeding…
Former Twitter engineers are building Particle, an AI-powered news reader
A team led by former Twitter engineers is rethinking how AI can be used to help people process news and information. Particle.news, which entered into private beta over the weekend,…
Europe remains hard to crack for North American GPs
A few years ago, setting up shop in Europe was the soup du jour for North American VCs. From OMERs and Lightspeed to Bessemer Venture Partners, the market attracted firms…
Virtual Staging AI helps realtors digitally furnish rooms within seconds
House staging is a significant part of the real estate industry, and while realtors have traditionally staged houses physically before posting a listing, it’s an expensive and time consuming process.…
A bumpy road for EV manufacturers
Welcome to Startups Weekly — your weekly recap of everything you can’t miss from the world of startups. Sign up here to get it in your inbox every Friday. Rivian…
Bringing the wedding industry into the 21st century with Shan-Lyn Ma of Zola
Welcome back to Found, where we get the stories behind the startups. This week Becca and Dom are joined by Shan-Lyn Ma, the co-founder and CEO of Zola, an online…
Building a startup is like building a house
Imagine, if you will, a contractor who approaches you with a gleam in their eye and a plan so vague it might as well be written in invisible ink. “Trust…
Groover bridges the promotion gap for independent artists
Last Monday, I discovered Walter the Producer, a Boston-based indie musician. His music isn’t on any of the playlists I follow, and he has less than 150,000 monthly listeners on…
Video game startups might be a bright spot for VC in 2024
The global video game industry makes more money each year than movies and music combined. But that doesn’t mean the sector was immune to the macroeconomic impacts of the last…
Poor people need not apply for this dating app
Welcome to Startups Weekly — your weekly recap of everything you can’t miss from the world of startups. Sign up here to get it in your inbox every Friday. I’m…
These founders want a more ethical company structure for startups
I’ve long argued that VCs getting excited about climate change is scary and that the goal of a startup is to stop existing. But I haven’t been particularly successful at…
Y Combinator puts out a new call for startups in areas like AI, spatial computing, climate tech and more
Spatial computing, climate tech, and applications of AI technology join the newly announced list of startup incubator Y Combinator’s newest request for startups, announced on Wednesday. In a blog post…
Deal Dive: VCs are no longer gunshy about firearm startups
Kai Kloepfer started biometric “smart” gun startup Biofire as a science fair project after the Aurora, Colorado, mass shooting in 2012 brought the U.S.’s gun violence problem close to home.…
Twitter alternative Bluesky shows off custom Super Bowl feeds (both with and without Taylor Swift)
Twitter/X alternative Bluesky is gearing up for one of the biggest weekends in social media with the launch of custom feeds prepped for Super Bowl fans. One feed focuses on…
The era of face-wearable computers
Welcome to Startups Weekly — your weekly recap of everything you can’t miss from the world of startups. Sign up here to get it in your inbox every Friday. Holy…
Why a B2B startup is placing a bet on a $7M Super Bowl ad
Some people watch the Super Bowl for the actual football game being played. Many watch the event for the halftime show or as an excuse to eat wings and other…
What’s next for STIRR, the free streaming service Thinking Media just acquired
Broadcasting company Sinclair recently sold off its free, ad-supported streaming TV (FAST) service STIRR to Thinking Media, a startup that provides cloud-based streaming solutions for FAST and over-the-top (OTT) services.…
How Twitter’s descent into chaos is paving the way for a new web
The post-Twitter era has spurred the development and further growth of numerous social networks that prioritize brief posts, from open source standbys like Mastodon to new decentralized concepts like Bluesky,…
Mamoon Hamid and Ilya Fushman of Kleiner Perkins: “More than 80%” of pitches now involve AI
Last week, at a StrictlyVC event in San Francisco, we sat down with Mamoon Hamid and Ilya Fushman, two longtime VCs whose paths first crossed as children in Frankfurt, Germany,…