Startups

Understanding Renaud Laplanche’s next Upgraded act – TechCrunch Renaud Laplanche spent ten years building LendingClub. In the process, he created an industry from scratch. Circumventing conventional banking channels for consumer credit began in 1996 when Chris Larsen started E-LOAN, which ultimately led to Prosper Marketplace. But LendingClub, which Laplanche founded …

VCs say Silicon Valley isn’t the gold mine it used to be – TechCrunch In the days leading up to TechCrunch Disrupt SF 2018, The Economist published the cover story, ‘Why Startups Are Leaving Silicon Valley.’ The author outlined reasons why the Valley has “peaked.” Venture capital investors are deploying …

uBiome is jumping into therapeutics with a healthy $83 million in Series C financing – TechCrunch 23andMe, IBM and now uBiome is the next tech company to jump into the lucrative multi-billion dollar drug discovery market. The company started out with a consumer gut health test to check whether your …

Cleo, the ‘digital assistant’ that replaces your banking apps, picks up $10M Series A led by Balderton – TechCrunch When Cleo, the London-based ‘digital assistant’ that wants to replace your banking apps, quietly entered the U.S., the company couldn’t have expected to be an instant hit. Many better funded British …

uBeam wireless power’s CEO Meredith Perry steps aside amidst B2B pivot – TechCrunch After repeatedly missing self-imposed deadlines for progress on its wireless charging-at-a-distance phone case, uBeam’s CEO Meredith Perry has decided to shift out of the CEO position and into a board member and senior advisor role. She’d founded …

Cluep, a Canadian startup that raised just $500k, acquired for $40M – TechCrunch Everyone loves a tale of a bootstrapped startup founder’s journey to an eight-figure exit. The team at Toronto-based Cluep have a good one. The founders of the adtech startup raised less than $500,000 from angel investors before selling their …

Meet the startups in the latest Alchemist class – TechCrunch Alchemist is the Valley’s premiere enterprise accelerator and every season they feature a group of promising startups. They are also trying something new this year: they’re putting a reserve button next to each company, allowing angels to express their interest …

Bird hits 10 million scooter rides – TechCrunch Bird just announced 10 million scooter rides since launching about one year ago. If this story sounds familiar to you, it’s probably because Bird competitor Lime earlier today announced it surpassed 11.5 million rides across its shared bikes and scooters. Bird, which …

MariaDB acquires Clusterix – TechCrunch MariaDB, the company behind the eponymous MySQL drop-in replacement database, today announced that it has acquired Clusterix, which itself is a MySQL drop-in replacement database, but with a focus on scalability. MariaDB will integrate Clusterix’s technology into its own database, which will allow it to offer …

Hear about the keys to local investing at Startup Battlefield Africa with Omobola Johnson and Lexi Novitske – TechCrunch Omobola Johnson (Image: Flickr/World Economic Forum under a CC BY-NC-SA 2.0 TechCrunch Startup Battlefield is returning to Africa in December, this time in Lagos, Nigeria. We will have a day-long program …