Even though Rohit Prakash was a dual MD and PhD researching optogenetics at Stanford University, his entrepreneurial itch kept returning him to his family’s small business roots. He and his co-founder Nipul Patel began researching the travails of small business owners, interviewing countless entrepreneurs, trying to figure out what their risks were or what caused […]

Early Facebook employee and longtime travel aficionado Julia Lam began studying consumer travel habits over a year ago to see how people planned their vacations and business trips. What she found was that people were often using a mess of Chrome tabs and text files. So she started Bucket with former Facebook engineer John Sichi […]

It’s an odd feeling to come from California, one of the world’s most prodigious economies where the infrastructure and public systems are simultaneously falling apart in plain view, and arrive in the tiny, landlocked East African country of Rwanda. The first thing you notice is how exceptionally clean the streets of Kigali appear. That’s because of a ban on non-biodegradable […]

Honor, an Andreessen Horowitz-backed company focused on caring for seniors as Baby Boomers tip over into retirement, is making its contractor workforce into a full-time one. The care workers, called CarePros within the company, will have the potential for stock options. “I really don’t want two classes of people in our company. Everyone is in it […]

Kim-Mai Cutler Contributor Kim-Mai Cutler is an operating partner for Initialized Capital, an early-stage venture firm and was previously a journalist covering technology, finance and policy issues at TechCrunch -- best-known for her long-form work on the Bay Area. More posts by this contributor The outlook for Bay Area startup space in 2017 OpenVote launches […]

Kim-Mai Cutler Contributor Kim-Mai Cutler is an operating partner for Initialized Capital, an early-stage venture firm and was previously a journalist covering technology, finance and policy issues at TechCrunch -- best-known for her long-form work on the Bay Area. More posts by this contributor The outlook for Bay Area startup space in 2017 OpenVote launches […]

Fundamental questions about the country’s direction will remain unanswered

The EU should do more to defend itself, without expecting the US to underwrite the peace

Quitting Europe would see Washington deliver to Beijing its most important strategic ambition

Donald Trump’s all-guns-blazing approach is a sure way to a lose-lose break with Beijing

The death of a doctor who transformed Afghan lives contrasts with revelations of US ignorance

The aggregate gains are distributed unevenly — witness how well the top 1 per cent have done

Politicians know what they have to do, but must beware the ‘gilets jaunes’

Past prime ministers put head before heart on Europe. Not any more

The two-party system that prevailed for so long has been upended

The superficial conclusion is that it will be a gift to populists and authoritarians 

A make-do-and-mend approach will not be enough — we need a societal transformation

Covid-19 and his brush with mortality present the UK prime minister with a unique chance

Ministers failed to grasp the threat as Boris Johnson tried to swerve a tough response

Stilt, a Y Combinator alum that provides financial services for immigrants without Social Security numbers or credit reports, announced today that it has closed a $7.5 million seed round. It also launched FDIC-insured pre-approved global bank accounts today. The startup has raised equity from investors including Liron Petrushka; Hillsven Capital; Streamlined Ventures; Gokul Rajaram; Bragiel […]

Locatee, a Swiss startup that uses existing sensors and IT infrastructures to provide employers and commercial real estate owners with detailed data about how their spaces are utilized, today announced that it has raised a $4 million Series A funding round led by San Francisco-based FYRFLY Venture Partners and Zurich-based Tomahawk VC. “We started the […]

Todd Chaffee has long been one of the most senior members of the late-stage venture firm Institutional Venture Partners. Chaffee joined IVP in 2000 after logging six years at Visa, and went on to lead rounds in numerous prominent later-stage companies, many (but not all) of which have gone public, including Coinbase, Compass, Klarna, Kayak, […]

Deskless workers make up 80% of the global workforce, but to Desmond Lim, that job title is his entire world. Lim grew up in Singapore and saw his father wake up every morning, six days a week, at 5 a.m. to start his job as a driver. Lim and his mom, who worked as a […]

Rish Joshi Contributor Rish is an entrepreneur and investor. Previously, he was a VC at Gradient Ventures (Google’s AI fund), co-founded a fintech startup building an analytics platform for SEC filings and worked on deep-learning research as a graduate student in computer science at MIT. More posts by this contributor Health APIs usher in the […]

Imagine a model of collaborative research and development among hospitals, pharmaceutical companies, universities and other research institutions where no one shared any actual data. That’s the dream of the new New York-based startup Owkin, which has raised $25 million in fresh financing from investors, including Bpifrance Large Venture, Cathay Innovation and MACSF (the French Pension […]

After suspending its self-driving operations at the end of March because of the COVID-19 pandemic, Waymo has announced it will resume driving operations on May 11 in Arizona. Waymo will start its driving operations in the Phoenix area again, a decision the company says it made after discussions with “our teams, partners and local and […]

Acast, a podcast monetization and distribution platform, announced a new partnership with JioSaavn, one of the largest streaming audio services in India. The agreement mean JioSaavn will distribute content from Acast and have access to its technology for podcasters. JioSaavn, which claims 104 million monthly active users, is the second-largest streaming audio service in India […]

“Is Greta Thunberg a hypocrite?” Google that phrase and you will get thousands of results. It just goes to show that, to a large extent, the “Q&A” model is broken on the internet. Where once Yahoo Answers and Quora were considered the bright young things of Web 2.0’s “Read/Write Web,” today there is only the […]

Saar Gur is adept at identifying the next big consumer trends earlier than most: The San Francisco-based general partner at CRV has led investments into leading consumer internet companies like Niantic, DoorDash, Bird, Dropbox, Patreon, Kapwing and ClassPass. His own experience stuck at home during the COVID-19 pandemic spurred his interest in three new investment […]

Chris Lynch, a founder and former general partner at Boston-based seed-stage fund Accomplice, remembers “VC Mountain in Waltham.” Back then, entrepreneurs on funding quests would visit a building overlooking the Waltham Reservoir near Boston where they pitched to a few investors: Matrix Partners, Charles River Ventures and Highland Capital Partners. “And if they didn’t invest in […]

German group’s battle to minimise financial damage from scandal hinges on test case

Manufacturers say they will struggle to provide equipment sought by business

Group says virus will hit restructuring, while private equity seeks to offload risk

Government loans a start but not the end; Pendragon takes a pop at Lookers; insurers and honey badgers

Thierry Breton says coronavirus crisis shows vital supplies are vulnerable to disruption

Australian carrier reviews operations and fleet due to coronavirus travel collapse

Showroom and factory closures blamed for dive to 4,321 registrations in April

Carmaker says profits are under pressure as suppliers pass on increased expenses

Demand in most profitable market nears 2019 level but brand expects slower revival in Europe

IAG boss Willie Walsh warns people will not fly if government brings in new measures

Japanese group joins other carmakers in restarting their manufacturing operations in Britain

National grabs of lunar and celestial resources need to be resisted

While Shopify is best-known for powering the online stores of more than 1 million businesses, the company is launching a consumer shopping app of its own today, simply called Shop. The app is actually an update and rebrand of Arrive, an app for tracking packages from Shopify merchants and other retailers, which the company says […]

WhatsApp, which began testing its mobile payments feature in India two years ago, could offer at least one more financial service to people in its biggest market. In a filing with the local regulator in India, the Facebook -owned messaging platform has listed credit as one of the areas it will pursue in the country. […]

TikTok, the widely popular video sharing app developed by one of the world’s most valued startups (ByteDance), continues to grow rapidly despite suspicion from the U.S. as more people look for ways to keep themselves entertained amid the coronavirus pandemic. The global app and its Chinese version, called Douyin, have amassed over 2 billion downloads […]

Meet Biloba, a French startup that wants to leverage tech to make it easier to keep your children healthy. The company recently launched a new mobile app that lets you chat with a doctor whenever you want between 8 AM and 8 PM. This way, if you have questions about your kids, you can get […]

Hooq, a five-year-old on-demand video streaming service that aimed to become “Netflix for Southeast Asia,” has shut down weeks after filing for liquidation and terminated its partnerships with Disney’s Hotstar, ride-hailing giant Grab, and Indonesia’s VideoMax. Hooq Digital, a joint venture among Singapore telecom group Singtel (majority owner), Sony Pictures, and Warner Bros Entertainment, discontinued […]

Peanut, an app that began as a tool for finding new mom friends, has evolved into a social network now used by 1.6 million women to discuss a range of topics, from pregnancy and parenthood to marriage and menopause, and everything in between. On the heels of significant growth in online networking fueled by the […]

Got something in your medical history that first responders should know about if you call 911? Things like known drug allergies, or the medications you’re on? The iPhone and Apple Watch will soon be able to share this information with first responders automatically (if you opt to let it do so). When a user with […]

Rish Joshi Contributor Rish is an entrepreneur and investor. Previously, he was a VC at Gradient Ventures (Google’s AI fund), co-founded a fintech startup building an analytics platform for SEC filings and worked on deep-learning research as a graduate student in computer science at MIT. More posts by this contributor Enterprise companies find MLOps critical […]