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EF raises $115M new fund, aiming to create another 300-plus startups in the next three years Feb 20, 2019

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Entrepreneur First (EF), the London-headquartered “talent investor” that recruits and backs individuals pre-team and pre-idea to enable them to found startups, has raised a new fund of its own to continue scaling globally. The $115 million first close was led by a number of leading (mostly unnamed) institutional investors across the U.S., Europe and Asia, including new anchor LP Trusted Insight. A number of well-known European entrepreneurs also invested.

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SendBird snags $52M Series B to expand messaging API tool Feb 19, 2019

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SendBird, a San Francisco area startup, helps developers add messaging to their apps with a couple of lines of code. It’s an idea similar to Stripe for payments or Twilio for communications. Today, the company announced a $52 million Series B investment. The round was led by Iconiq Capital. Existing investors Shasta Ventures, August Capital, Y Combinator, and Funders Club also participated. Today’s investment brings the total raised to over $70 million, according to Crunchbase.

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Startups Weekly: Is Y Combinator’s latest cohort too big? Feb 19, 2019

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Greetings from Chittorgarh, one of my stops on a two-week excursion through Goa and Rajasthan, India. I’ve been a little too busy exploring, photographing cows and monkeys and eating a lot of delicious food to keep up with *all* the tech news, but I’ve still got the highlights. For starters, if you haven’t heard yet, TechCrunch launched Extra Crunch, a paid premium subscription offering full of amazing content.

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Alan raises another $45 million for its health insurance product Feb 18, 2019

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Paris-based startup Alan has raised a Series B round of funding of $45 million (€40 million). Index Ventures is once again leading the round, with partners of DST Global also participating. The company had raised a $28 million funding round only ten months ago. Alan is a software-as-a-service startup tackling a very specific industry — the health insurance market in France — and soon across Europe.

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3DEN raises $2M to create pay-as-you-go urban spaces Feb 18, 2019

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3DEN is building spaces for what it calls the “in-between moments” of your day. The name (pronounced “Eden”) comes from the idea of the “third place” — a space that’s neither home nor work. Founder and CEO Ben Silver told me the idea is to create a space that people can use if, say, they’ve got 45 minutes to fill between meetings, or if they’ve just gotten off a red eye flight and need somewhere to freshen up.

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WeWork launches skills-based profiles as a value add for tenants Feb 15, 2019

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WeWork has made a big name for itself in a short period of time as a global co-working space. In fact, WeWork is now the largest private office tenant in all of Manhattan. But whether the real estate play alone can support its reported $47 billion valuation still remains to be seen. That might explain the company’s 2018 acquisition spree, as well as today’s newly announced changes to the WeWork app.

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Why your startup may not be as great as everyone says Feb 15, 2019

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Gil Ben-Artzy Contributor Gil Ben-Artzy is a founding partner at UpWest Labs. One of the very first things we ask Israeli entrepreneurs who are hoping to break into the U.S. market is to tell us how their product or service is being received by their target market. What is the feedback? Are potential customers hungry for what the team is selling? Validation, both of the broader vision and the early product itself, has to be a key focus for any aspiring entrepreneur.

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Donde Search picks up $6 million to help fashion retailers with visual search Feb 14, 2019

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Donde Search has just closed a $6 million Series A investment led by Matrix Partners, with participation from previous investors such as senior leaders from AliExpress, Google and Waze. Donde first launched in 2014 as a consumer-facing app that helped users search and discover apparel items based on visual characteristics rather than text-based searches. In early 2018, the company pivoted to the enterprise space, helping retailers power suggestions and related items on their websites.

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Tim Cook-backed shower startup Nebia shows off a warmer, water-saving shower head Feb 14, 2019

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I’m not in the habit of getting naked during meetings at startup offices, but this time it felt appropriate. Nebia, a shower startup that has attracted investments from the likes of Apple CEO Tim Cook and former Google chairman Eric Schmidt’s foundationis back with some new cash (though it won’t divulge how much) and a new generation of its thoughtfully designed shower heads that aim to dramatically reduce the amount of water people use while cleaning up.

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DoorDash subsidizes driver wages with tips Feb 13, 2019

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It’s true that DoorDash offsets the amount it pays its drivers with customer tip, according to an FAQ page on its own site. “For each delivery, you will always receive at least $1 from DoorDash plus 100% of the customer tip,” DoorDash states on a Dasher FAQ page.“Where that sum is less than the guaranteed amount, DoorDash will provide a pay boost to make sure you receive the guaranteed amount.

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