TechCrunch - 3 years ago

Some investors turn to cutting fully remote checks while sheltering in place

By March 16, founder Janine Yancey was tired of playing the waiting game. After watching the stock market take yet another unprecedented nosedive due to coronavirus, she called up a potential investor. “If this isn’t going to happen, let’s call it no...

TechCrunch - 3 years ago

Big VCs stacked billions in Q1 while smaller firms saw their haul shrink

Hello and welcome back to our regular morning look at private companies, public markets and the gray space in between. After spending perhaps more time than we should have recently trying to figure out what’s going on with the public markets, l...

TechCrunch - 3 years ago

Alternative assets are becoming mainstream

Anthony Zhang Contributor Share on Twitter Anthony is co-founder and CEO of Vinovest, a platform for investing in fine wine. He has previously founded and sold two companies (EnvoyNow &am...

TechCrunch - 3 years ago

Building and investing in the ‘human needs economy’

Heather Hartnett Contributor Share on Twitter Heather Hartnett is general partner and CEO of Human Ventures, an early-stage venture fund and startup studio in New York City. The entr...

TechCrunch - 3 years ago

Hypnosis for health? Investors have placed a $1.1 million bet on Mindset Health that it can work

Chris and Alex Naoumidis came to hypnotherapy through dresses. As The New York Times reported last year, the two brothers initially started their careers as startup entrepreneurs with a peer-to-peer dress-sharing app for women. The Australian natives...

TechCrunch - 3 years ago

What’s up with tiny checks at giant valuations?

Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines. Are you a regular Equity listener? Take our survey here! We talk about it on the show, and it’s embedded below in...

TechCrunch - 3 years ago

Singapore-based Intellect wants to lower barriers to mental health support in Asia

Taking care of your emotional well-being is as important as physical health, but in Asia, the topic is often stigmatized. Intellect, a Singapore-based startup, wants to make the idea of mental health more approachable with an app that offers self-gui...

TechCrunch - 3 years ago

Sonantic is ready to convince listeners that synthetic voices can cry

When you think of voice assistants like Amazon’s Alexa and Apple’s Siri, the words “emotional” and “expressive” probably don’t come to mind. Instead, there’s that recognizably flat and polite voice, dev...

TechCrunch - 3 years ago

RenovAI helps retailers offer automated interior design advice to their customers

Alon Gilady, CEO of RenovAI, told me his startup is trying to solve the problem that many of us face when we’re moving into a new home — we aren’t interior designers, but we can’t afford to hire real designers, either. Apparently Gi...

TechCrunch - 3 years ago

Snap’s Yellow accelerator debuts its third batch of investments

This morning, Snap joined a host of startup accelerators shifting its demo day online amid the COVID-19 quarantine. With its third class of startups, Yellow, Snap’s in-house startup accelerator that launched in 2018, brought investors and foun...