Last day for early-bird tickets to TC Sessions: Robotics + AI 2020

Today’s your last day to score early-bird pricing on tickets to TC Sessions: Robotics + AI 2020, which takes place on March 3. If you want to keep $150 in your wallet, beat the deadline and buy your ticket here before the clock strikes 11:59 p.m. (PT) tonight!

Our one-day conference dedicated to robotics and AI — the good, the bad and the c

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During the Federal Aviation Administration’s (FAA) 23rd annual Commercial Space Transportation Conference in Washington, D.C., one panel focused on the changing regulatory environment when it comes to private launch activities, and how those are integrated into existing rules and practices for managing commercial air transportation. Panelist

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At the FAA’s 23rd Annual Commercial Commercial Space Transportation Conference in Washington, DC on Wednesday, a panel dedicated to the topic of trends in VC around space startups touched on public vs. private funding, the right kinds of space companies that should even be considering venture funding, and, perhaps most notably, the big L: L

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Moda Operandi, an online marketplace that specialises in right-off-the-runway luxury fashion, accessories and home decor, is today announcing a high-priced event of its own: it’s raised $100 million, a mix of equity and debt that it will use to invest in its platform and technology as well as to continue growing business overall. Founded in 2010, i

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How acquirers look at your company

There comes a time for many founders when they are ready to pass the baton of running their business to someone else. It’s a rare founder who wants to go from zero to running and scaling a large, long-term company. When that time comes — you may hav

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UCSD hospital gets a drone delivery program powered by Matternet and UPS

Drone delivery may not make a lot of sense for food or parcel delivery yet, but for hospitals it could be a lifesaver. A new test program is being inaugurated at UC San Diego’s Jacobs Medical Center, where Matternet drones operated by UPS will fly blood samples and other items to and from other nearby facilities.

The new program will be the third

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Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.

It was yet another jam-packed week full of big news, IPO happenings, and venture activity. As always we’ve done our best to deliver the gist on what’s been going on. We had Alex Wilhelm and Danny Crichton on hand to

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CloudTrucks raises $6.1 million to help truckers run their businesses

After selling autonomous driving startup Scotty Labs to DoorDash just five months ago, entrepreneur Tobenna Arodiogbu is back with a new startup. This time, he’s focused solely on truck drivers and their businesses. CloudTrucks, which aims to help truck drivers earn more money, has closed a $6.1 million round led by Craft Ventures with p

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Fifty iPads were stolen from Verkada co-founder Hans Robertson’s old company. Only when they checked the security system did they realize the video cameras hadn’t been working for months. He was pissed. “The market lagged behind the progress seen in the consumer space, where someone could buy high-end cameras with cloud-based software to protect t

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How Bykea is winning Pakistanride-hailing and delivery market

Increasingly, the streets of Karachi and Lahore are being flooded with men riding bikes and wearing green T-shirts, a writer friend recently told me. In a sense, these men represent the emergence of Pakistan’s tech startups.

India now has more than 25,000 startups and raised a record $14.5 billion last year, according to government figures. But not

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The don&ts of debt for fast-growing startups

I work every day with company founders who are grappling with the challenges of driving business growth while keeping their finances on an even keel. One topic we often

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“We’re trying to shift cryptocurrency from this speculative asset class to driving real-world utility,” Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong tells me. How? Through commerce and micropayments. But now Coinbase has the who to build it. Today the startup announced it has hired away former head of Product for Indian e-commerce giant Flipkart and Google

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Publisher engagement startup Insticator bets on commenting with Squawk-It acquisition

Insticator, a startup helping publishers add to their content elements like polls, quizzes and suggested story widgets, has made its first acquisition — a commenting platform called Squawk-It.

Insticator CEO Zack Dugow said his platform benefits online publishers by keeping audiences engaged and bringing in new ad revenue (which is split between

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Medloop secures €6M from Kamet Ventures and AXA for self-service patient app

Medloop, which allows patients to manage healthcare needs and providers, has secured €6 million from Kamet Ventures and AXA.

The cash will be used to enhance its product offering and continue expansion across Germany and the U.K. Medloop is also developing an evidence-based medical rule engine embedded on the Electronic Medical Record (EMR) of

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48 hours left on early-bird pricing to TC Sessions: Robotics + AI 2020

Just two days stand between you and serious savings on tickets to TC Sessions: Robotics + AI 2020. This annual day-long event draws the most innovative and visionary technologists, researchers and investors from two game-changing industries — last year we hosted 1,500 attendees. Make a smart investment. Buy an early-bird ticket before prices go up

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In 1998, the startup company Illumina launched a revolution in the life sciences industry by developing technology to slash the costs of identifying and mapping genetic material.

Now, a little over 20 years later, Mammoth Biosciences is hoping to do the same thing for gene editing tools.

The company, co-founded by Jennifer Doudna, who did some of

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Millennials are tired of being drunk, but are locked into a culture that puts alcohol at the center of professional events and outside-of-work gatherings. Twenty-somethings in New York and San Francisco don’t want to spend $17 on a gin and tonic at a compulsory happy hour. That’s why Haus, a new direct-to-consumer aperitif startup, is debuting its

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Early Stage SF is around the corner, on April 28 in San Francisco, and we are more than excited for this brand new event. The intimate gathering of founders, VCs, operators and tech industry experts is all about giving founders the tools they need to find success, no matter the challenge ahead of them.

Struggling to understand the legal aspects of

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IPO pricing for One Medical and Casper will set the tone for 2020unicorn debuts

Hello and welcome back to our regular morning look at private companies, public markets and the gray space in between.

As One Medical looks to become the first venture-backed company to price its IPO in 2020 this afternoon and Casper aims to price its own shares next Wednesday, the market is gearing up for a pair of tests.

If you listen to the

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OpsRamp raises $37.5M for its hybrid IT operations platform

OpsRamp, a service that helps IT teams discover, monitor, manage and — maybe most importantly — automate their hybrid environments, today announced that it has closed a $37.5 million funding round led by Morgan Stanley Expansion Capital, with participation from existing investor Sapphire Ventures and new investor Hewlett Packard Enterprise.

OpsRam

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Gabi, a startup built to help consumers save money on home and auto insurance, announced today that it has closed a $27 million Series B.

The company intends to use its new capital to rapidly expand its team and invest in its product. Nearly every startup does something similar after it collects new cash, so what makes Gabi’s round interesting?

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With $30 million in fresh funds, The Bouqs plans to plant its flower delivery business in Japan

The Bouqs plans to take a slice of Japan’s $6 billion flower market this year with a $30 million strategic growth round from Japanese enterprise business investor Yamasa. While The Bouqs still must compete with bigger contenders like 1-800-Flowers and FTD in the U.S., it will now have to take on incumbents like Ayoma Flower Market and FloraJapan,

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Codility, a platform that helps tech recruiters and hiring managers asses candidates through online coding tests, today announced that it has raised a $22 million Series A round led by Oxx and Kennet Partners.

This marks the first time Codility has raised any funding, after 10 years as a bootstrapped company. Clearly, though, despite having

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In the streaming era, data on a show’s viewership and popularity is harder to come by. It’s no longer as simple as setting up a Nielsen box to get data on a show being watched across TVs, phones, tablets and the web. One company solving this problem for content owners, broadcasters and streamers alike is Whip Media Group, parent company to the TV a

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One day left for early-bird tickets to TC Sessions: Robotics + AI 2020

No one ever wants to pay more, and that’s as true for well-financed companies as it is for early-stage startup founders on a shoe-string budget. So if you love robots and machine learning, why spend more on your ticket to TC Sessions: Robotics + AI 2020? Prices go up on January 31, which means you have just one day left to buy an early-bird ticket.

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Where top VCs are investing in travel, tourism and hospitality tech

The venture community has been fixated on travel and hospitality since the dot-com era and early-2000s, when mainstays like Kayak and Airbnb were still Silicon Valley darlings. As the multi-trillion-dollar global travel and hospitality market continues to grow, VCs are still foaming at the mouth for the opportunity to redefine the ways we move and

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Last year, when co-founders Danny Steiner and Krista Berlincourt debuted Kenshō Health, their directory and information service for holistic medicine, Berlincourt called it “the antithesis of Goop.”

While Gwyneth Paltrow’s lifestyle brand startup serves up a heady mix of unverified pseudo-scientific claims alongside longstanding holistic

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SoftBank wants its on-demand portfolio to stop losing so much money

SoftBank wants its competing portfolio companies to stop losing so much money and, in some cases, to merge.

That’s the news out from Financial Times today, which reported that Uber and DoorDash discussed merging last year. The talks didn’t wind up in a deal.

The two companies, each heavily backed by SoftBank and its formerly active Vision Fund,

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Maze raises $2 million and adds Figma support to enable user testing at scale

Maze wants to reinvent usability tests by letting you turn design prototypes into tests in just a few clicks. It could become the equivalent of a developing test suite for developers, but this time for designers — it could be something that you run before shipping an update to make sure everything works fine. The startup just raised a $2 million f

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GoDaddy continues to expand beyond websites by acquiring social content startup Over

GoDaddy has reached an agreement to acquire Over, the startup behind an app that helps businesses create the photos and videos they need for social media.

Justin Tsai, GoDaddy’s vice president of growth and product, said this acquisition is about acknowledging “a world of entrepreneurs who may never have a website.”

He told me, “Over’s capabilities

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