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 Immigration Services.” She connects people with the businesses and opportunities that expand their lives. More posts by this contributor Ask Sophie: Does the H-1B visa…
As the year comes to a close, early-stage venture capital investment continues its slowdown, according to data from Crunchbase. However, BoxGroup is one VC firm that is keeping the investment train rolling. TechCrunch learned exclusively that the firm, based in New York and San Francisco, quietly closed on $425 million in capital commitments across two…
Companies are increasingly curious about AI and the ways in which it can be used to (potentially) boost productivity. But they’re also wary of the risks. In a recent Workday survey, enterprises cite the timeliness and reliability of the underlying data, potential bias and security and privacy as the top barriers to AI implementation. Sensing…
David Spreng is a seasoned venture and growth debt lender with 30 years of experience, the founder and CEO of Runway Growth Capital, and the author of All Money Is Not Created Equal. More posts by this contributor All money is not created equal: What raising venture debt looks like Money, like everything else of…
What’s next for Texts.com? The all-in-one messaging app was acquired this fall by WordPress.com owner Automattic for $50 million, marking the company’s first official expansion into the world of private messaging — outside of its startup investments, at least, which have included Apple’s recent foe Beeper and Element, a Matrix-powered app. Like Beeper, Texts.com is also…
What happens when you feed a few thousand pitch decks to an AI, analyze them all, and figure out what the most common problems are for founders trying to raise early-stage funding? Well, I decided to find out. A while back, I built a tool that would automatically analyze a pitch deck and give you…
The investment arm of the UK retail bank M&G has led a funding of $340 million into Udaan, a business-to-business e-commerce startup, in one of the largest financing rounds secured by an Indian startup in 2023. The Bengaluru-headquartered startup, which helps merchants in smaller Indian cities and towns secure inventories from major brands as well…
Instagram is considering a new feature called “flipside” that allows users to establish a new, private side to their profile where they can post more candid and personal photos for a subset of their friends. The feature essentially productizes “finstas” — the slang term for alternate Instagram accounts where people post their real-life photos, as…
Gift giving. It’s top of mind this time of year, and we’re here to suggest two ways you can spread joy this holiday season. First, never — and we mean never — give the “gift” of fruit cake. Second, give your startup dream the gift of growth. Treat yourself and your business with a pass…
Google losing the antitrust lawsuit brought by Epic Games concerning the Play Store will have far-reaching implications for the mobile app economy. The Exchange explores startups, markets and money. Read it every morning on TechCrunch+ or get The Exchange newsletter every Saturday. In the jury’s view, Epic showed a “preponderance of evidence [that] Google willfully…
