TechCrunch Startup News

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Cherry lets startup employees choose their own office perks Mar 01, 2019

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Forget the office ping pong table,Cherry, a startup in Y Combinator’s latest batch, wants to let employees take company perks into their own hands.

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Sequoia-backed Medallia files to raise $70M at a $1.7B valuation, documents show Mar 01, 2019

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Customer experience management platform Medallia has filed to raise up to $70 million in Series F funding, according to regulatory documents obtained by the Prime Unicorn Index. The new shares were priced at $15 apiece, valuing the nearly two-decades-old business at $1.7 billion. We’ve reached out to Medallia for comment. Medallia is expected to finally transition to the public markets in 2019, a year chock-full of high-profile unicorn IPOs.

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Search marketing company Botify raises $20M Feb 28, 2019

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Botify, a search engine optimization company that works with customers like Expedia and Nike, announced today that it has raised $20 million in Series B funding. Co-founder and CEO Adrien Menard said that the opportunity in SEO is “even bigger now than in the past,” and that the problem ismuch broader problem than many realize.

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The Shadow Ghost turns cloud gaming into a seamless experience Feb 28, 2019

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French startup Blade, the company behind Shadow, is launching a new set-top box to access its cloud gaming service — the Shadow Ghost. I’ve been playing with the device for a couple of weeks and here’s my review. The Shadow Ghost is a tiny little box that doesn’t do much. The true magic happens in a data center near your home. When you sign up to Shadow, you don’t even have to get a box.

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For a monthly subscription fee, this startup will send out customized gifts to current and prospective clients at scale Feb 27, 2019

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For a monthly subscription fee, this startup will send out customized gifts to current and prospective clients at scale In today’s noisy, fast-paced world, finding a way to let clients and potential customers know that they are top of mind can be a major challenge for companies. Enter Sendoso, a 2.5-year-old, San Francisco-based online-to-offline startup that promises to source, store and ship anything a business ever needs to send — and track its return on investment, to boot.

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Gradient Ventures, Google’s AI fund, leads $7M investment in English learning app Elsa Feb 27, 2019

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Google’s Gradient Ventures, the search giant’s dedicated AI fund, is casting its eye to Asia after it led a $7 million Series A round for Elsa, a startup that operates an app for English language learners. The deal is Gradient’s first in Asia, and it includes participation from existing investors Monk’s Hill Ventures and SOSV. Elsa has now raised $12 million to date.

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Ubiquitilink advance means every phone is now a satellite phone Feb 26, 2019

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Last month I wrote about Ubiquitilink, which promised, through undisclosed means, it was on the verge of providing a sort of global satellite-based roaming service. But how, I asked? (Wait, they told me.) Turns out our phones are capable of a lot more than we think: they can reach satellites acting as cell towers in orbit just fine, and the company just proved it.

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Airbnb, Automattic and Pinterest top rank of most acquisitive unicorns Feb 25, 2019

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Jason Rowley Contributor Jason Rowley is a venture capital and technology reporter for Crunchbase News. More posts by this contributor Companies raising supergiant VC aren’t getting any younger Coastal startups don’t have a monopoly on raising big at early-stage It takes a lot more than a good idea and the right timing to build a billion-dollar company.

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DoorDash raises $400M round, now valued at $7.1B Feb 25, 2019

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Delivery company DoorDash is announcing that it has raised $400 million in Series F financing. Earlier this month, The Wall Street Journal reported that the company was looking to raise $500 million at a valuation of $6 billion or more. In fact, DoorDash now says the funding came at a $7.1 billion valuation.

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wearTRBL lets you express yourself with a connected T-shirt Feb 22, 2019

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When I interviewed Parrot founder and CEO Henri Seydoux at TechCrunch Disrupt back in 2016, he surprised everyone when he said he was working on a new kind of T-shirt —nobody knew for sure whether he was joking or not. But the connected T-shirt is real, and it’s called wearTRBL. While the project started as a Parrot subsidiary, the company was spun off in July 2018. Seydoux is still credited as co-founder and Olivier Levy acts as co-founder and CEO.

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