shasta ventures
Literati raises $40M for its book club platform
Literati has raised a $40 million Series B to pursue an unusual startup opportunity — namely, book clubs. Founder and CEO Jessica Ewing (a former product manager at Google) explained that the Austin
5 consumer hardware VCs share their 2021 investment strategies
"Tesla is arguably the most interesting connected consumer hardware company since Apple exploded in scale with the success of the iPhone."
Investors, founders report hot market for API startups
Startups that deliver their service via an API are having a moment. Or perhaps a year. Speaking with founders and investors this year, it has become clear that the API model of delivering a product is
Macrometa, an edge computing service for app developers, lands $7 million seed round led by DNX
As people continue to work and study from home because of the COVID-19 pandemic, interest in edge computing has increased. Macrometa, a Palo Alto-based startup that provides edge computing infrastruct
Was Snowflake’s IPO mispriced or just misunderstood?
Welcome back to The TechCrunch Exchange, a weekly startups-and-markets newsletter. It’s broadly based on the daily column that appears on Extra Crunch, but free, and made for your weekend reading.
Mustard raises $1.7M to improve athletic mechanics with AI
Athletic coaching is a massive, multi-billion-dollar industry. No surprise, really, given the massive revenue some top athletes are able to generate. Mustard is working to supplant — or at least aug
What’s next for space tech? 9 VCs look to the future
Space is a special category of VC investment in the best of times — and the COVID-19 pandemic is not the best of times. Still, investors focused on and familiar with space see a lot of opportunity i
9 top space tech VCs on the market’s opportunities and challenges
Space is a relatively niche area of tech investing in the best of times, but COVID-19 has redrawn the landscape. What do investors who are active in this sector think about what’s changed, what
Daily Crunch: Airbnb takes a $1B loan
Airbnb takes on new debt as it adapts to a world without tourism, Apple announces a new entry-level iPhone and Google lowers Nest camera quality. Here’s your Daily Crunch for April 15, 2020. 1.
As stocks recover, private investors aren’t buying the hype
You can easily read optimism in the stock market. Ask around the private markets, however, and you'll hear a very different narrative.
Shasta Ventures debuts ‘Ignite,’ a collection of help and services to drive its startups to $10M ARR
Shasta Ventures, a venture capital firm that has raised more than a half-dozen funds in its life, announced a new program this morning designed to help its portfolio companies scale to $10 million of
Leanplum raises another $27M, shakes up its executive ranks
Customer engagement platform Leanplum today announced that it has raised a $27 million extension to its 2017 $47 million Series D round. This additional funding was led by previous investors Norwest V
Announcing the final agenda for Robotics + AI — March 3 at UC Berkeley
TechCrunch is returning to UC Berkeley on March 3 to bring together some of the most influential minds in robotics and artificial intelligence. Each year we strive to bring together a cross-section of
Join the Q&A with top speakers at TC Sessions: Robotics + AI (March 3)
Over the past four years, TechCrunch has brought together some of the biggest names in robotics — founders, CEOs, VCs and researchers — for TC Sessions: Robotics + AI. The show has provide
Leading robotics VCs talk about where they’re investing
The Valley’s affinity for robotics shows no signs of cooling. Technical enhancements through innovations like AI/ML, compute power and big data utilization continue to drive new performance mile
Manage your angel investors, or they’ll manage you
It's almost certain that an angel will play a role in your startup’s journey, but like everything else in a startup’s life, you need to watch out for potential problems. If you don’t manage them
MediaLab acquires messaging app Kik, expanding its app portfolio
Popular messaging app Kik is, indeed, “here to stay” following an acquisition by the Los Angeles-based multimedia holding company, MediaLab. It echoes the same message from Kik’s chi
Tiger Global values people management tool Lattice at ~$200M
Lattice raises another $25 million.
A flaw in Webex and Zoom let researchers snoop on users’ video calls
A team of security researchers found they could tap into Webex and Zoom video meetings because many weren’t protected with a code. Researchers at Cequence, a startup focused on protecting applic
Meme editor Kapwing grows 10X, raises $11M
Kapwing is a laymen’s Adobe Creative Suite built for what people actually do on the internet: make memes and remix media. Need to resize a video? Add text or subtitles to a video? Trim or crop o