A postcard from Las Vegas and CES
Welcome to Startups Weekly. Sign up here to get it in your inbox every Friday. This week Devin, Kirsten and I have been running around in Las Vegas for CES…
How to build a solid — and profitable! — AI startup
After a year of people throwing money at AI companies, investors are now looking for startups that are more solid and viable. That could prove daunting for AI founders: AI…
Funding for female founders remained consistent in 2023
Female-founded companies in the U.S. raised $44.4 billion out of the $170.59 billion in venture capital allocated last year. Companies with founding teams that are all women raised around $3.1…
Female-founded startup Diem wants to be the go-to social search engine for women and non-binary folks
A startup called Diem wants to tackle the problem of “search engine gender bias,” where results can produce default male information, making many women feel unsatisfied by the answers they…
The IPO window is reopening — here’s what startups need to know
Gary Klintworth Contributor Gary Klintworth is a seasoned financial executive with 25+ years of experience in industry, accounting, leadership and business development. He currently serves as Senior Managing Director at…
App economy recovered in 2023, with $171B in consumer spending, but downloads were flat
After the app economy slowed for the first time ever in 2022, things picked up pace again over the past year. According to app intelligence provider data.ai’s annual “State of…
Seedstars Africa Ventures gets $30M backing from EIB Global to invest in early-stage startups
Seedstars Africa Ventures has received a $30 million capital commitment from EIB Global, an arm of the European Investment Bank, which becomes the first major institutional investment for its first…
Keith Rabois dishes on his surprising return to Khosla Ventures, after leaving the firm in 2019 for Founders Fund
Earlier today, Forbes reported that venture capitalist, operator and entrepreneur Keith Rabois is returning to Khosla Ventures (“KV”), the Silicon Valley outfit where he cut his teeth as a full-time…
What happens to Carta now?
Cap table management startup Carta has been dealing with a PR nightmare for the past couple of days. This isn’t Carta’s first public scandal, to be clear, but this new…
When should you hire a CFO?
Dan Allred is Liquidity Group's North America CEO. Allred is a fintech professional and spent two decades at Silicon Valley Bank (SVB), most recently as a Senior Market Manager and…
Carta, the cap table management outfit, is accused of unethical tactics by a prominent startup
Carta, an ambitious 12-year-old Silicon Valley outfit, has gone through numerous iterations over time, originally inviting investors, startups, and employees to use its software to manage their cap tables and…
Tulsa’s tech scene remains resilient amid state’s anti-DEI efforts
Oklahoma took a stand against diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) last month. The state’s governor, Kevin Stitt, signed an executive order defunding DEI efforts in public colleges and universities and…
Rest in peace, 2023 startups — Here’s to 2024
Welcome to Startups Weekly. Sign up here to get it in your inbox every Friday. Hello, and welcome to the very last Startups Weekly ever. Don’t worry! We’re not going…
Investors are optimistic about 2024
Welcome back, and welcome to 2024! We’re starting the year off on a high note: After a mediocre 2023, investors are optimistic about exit activity picking back up in 2024.…
VCs are optimistic that AI investing will move beyond the hype in 2024
Artificial intelligence startups had a wild ride in 2023. Everyone and their grandmother tried out some sort of AI tool, startups in the space raised rounds at 2021 valuations, there…
The goal of a startup is to cease existing
In startup-land, the lifecycle of birth, growth and the inevitable leap of faith happens at a breakneck pace. Still, we occasionally fall into the trap of grieving the demise of…
Ask Sophie: What changes are in store for PERM?
Sophie Alcorn Contributor Sophie Alcorn is the founder of Alcorn Immigration Law in Silicon Valley and 2019 Global Law Experts Awards’ “Law Firm of the Year in California for Entrepreneur…
Building a strong startup developer culture requires constant adjustment
Most tech startups are born from a few early engineers building the company’s initial product. As those first builders work together, they begin to establish a developer culture — sometimes…
Tech for Palestine launches to provide tools to help support Palestinians
More than 40 founders, investors, engineers and others in the tech industry are today announcing a coalition called Tech for Palestine to build open source projects, tools and data to…
Debunking the myth that crowdfunding is only good for cash
Equity crowdfunding, or raising funds from both unaccredited and accredited investors, can be a great alternative to venture capital for startups. The strategy has become significantly more popular in recent…
Startups Yearly: The biggest startup stories from 2023
Welcome to Startups Weekly. Sign up here to get it in your inbox every Friday. Thank you for subscribing to Startups Weekly. This week, I’m taking my parents to Yosemite…
Play our 2023 TechCrunch Pub Quiz! (Round 2)
It’s round two of our Pub Quiz! If you didn’t do too well on our first one, no worries — New Year’s Eve is around the corner, so we’ve created…
More than 40 investors share their top predictions for 2024
If I had to characterize 2023, I’d say it was the year of the great venture divide. Many aspects of venture didn’t follow one trend, but instead saw the emergence…
Ask Sophie: Whatever happened to International Entrepreneur Parole?
Sophie Alcorn Contributor Sophie Alcorn is the founder of Alcorn Immigration Law in Silicon Valley and 2019 Global Law Experts Awards’ “Law Firm of the Year in California for Entrepreneur…
What VCs are looking for in the next wave of cybersecurity startups
Casber Wang is a partner at Sapphire Ventures, where he focuses primarily on security, enterprise infrastructure, and data and analytics. In cybersecurity, AI often stands for “already implemented.” Security vendors…
Thank god a startup is tackling bed bugs
Bugs can be, well, pests. They can cause serious damage inside homes and buildings, and can also wreak havoc outdoors on crops and plants. The amount of chaos and calamity…
A first look at nine new IndieBio NY companies that will present to VCs next month
It was pure coincidence, but months before the pandemic took hold around the world, IndieBio — a startup accelerator devoted to startups using biology to solve large problems — expanded…
Proposed new rule: All AI output must rhyme
Welcome to Startups Weekly. Sign up here to get it in your inbox every Friday. I know I usually lead Startups Weekly with my own column (and I did write…
A strong foundation can help raise early-stage capital
As valuations come down, now more than ever, founders “need to prove their company is built to last with long-term profitability and scalability in mind,” writes Russ Heddleston, CEO of…
Ask Sophie: Is it easier yet for AI founders to get green cards?
Sophie Alcorn Contributor Sophie Alcorn is the founder of Alcorn Immigration Law in Silicon Valley and 2019 Global Law Experts Awards’ “Law Firm of the Year in California for Entrepreneur…
A blueprint for founders navigating economic uncertainty
Russ Heddleston Contributor Russ Heddleston is co-founder and former CEO of DocSend at Dropbox. More posts by this contributor Early-stage founders still have currency: Fundraising in times of greater VC…
OurCrowd makes the first 8 investments from its Israel Resilience Fund
Israeli investment platform OurCrowd today announced that it now has $13 million in capital commitments for its $50 million Israel Resilience Fund, a fund the organization launched shortly after the…