The Exchange: Unicorn IPOs, tech earnings and my favorite VC round from the week
The TechCrunch Exchange newsletter just launched. Soon only a partial version will hit the site, so sign up to get the full download. Welcome back to The TechCrunch Exchange, a weekly startups-and-markets newsletter for your weekend enjoyment. It’s...
Point wants to provide credit card rewards with debit cards
Point, a new challenger bank in the U.S., is launching publicly today with an invite system. While Point is technically providing a bank account, the company focuses on rewards associated with a debit card. “I started Point as a solution about everything...
Delightree raises $3M to help franchise business owners simplify their operations
Owning one brick-and-mortar business seems complicated enough. But running multiple locations? For many owners, that’s a constant juggling act of phone calls, check lists and driving back and forth from store to store. In the middle of a pandemic,...
Google is making autofill on Chrome for mobile more secure
Google today announced a new autofill experience for Chrome on mobile that will use biometric authentication for credit card transactions, as well as an updated built-in password manager that will make signing in to a site a bit more straightforward....
LA’s consumer goods rental service, Joymode, sells to the NYC retail investment firm, XRC Labs
After raising $15 million in financing from one of technology’s most successful global investment firms, the Los Angeles-based consumer goods rental company Joymode is selling itself to an early-stage retail investment firm out of New York, XRC...
Facetune maker Lightricks brings its popular selfie retouching features to video
Lightricks, the startup behind a suite of photo and video editing apps — including most notably, selfie editor Facetune 2 — is taking its retouching capabilities to video. Today, the company is launching Facetune Video, a selfie video editing...
Tandem snags $5.7M for its language buddy app amid COVID-19’s e-learning boom
The Berlin-based startup behind Tandem, an app for practicing a second language, has closed a £4.5 million (~$5.7M) Series A round of financing to capitalize on growth opportunities it’s seeing as the coronavirus crisis continues to accelerate...
Typewise taps $1M to build an offline next word prediction engine
Swiss keyboard startup Typewise has bagged a $1 million seed round to build out a typo-busting, ‘privacy-safe’ next word prediction engine designed to run entirely offline. No cloud connectivity, no data mining risk is the basic idea. They...
Startups Weekly: What education do you need to build a great tech company?
Editor’s note: Get this free weekly recap of TechCrunch news that any startup can use by email every Saturday morning (7am PT). Subscribe here. The easy startup ideas have all been done — the ones that just required some homebrew hardware hacking...
Pandora launches interactive voice ads into beta testing
Pandora is launching interactive voice ads into wider public testing, the company announced this morning. The music streaming service first introduced the new advertising format, where users verbally respond to advertiser prompts, back in December with...
