Angel investors often make surprisingly bad decisions. Here’s where they screw up. Angels should have the same depth of understanding of the markets they invest in as the people who are working in the field, with fiduciary responsibilities to the people whose money they are investing. Angels have a broader set of reasons for investing,…
Spotify announced today the launch of “Songwriter Promo Cards,” a promotional tool for songwriters to highlight their songs and get discovered by new listeners and potential collaborators. Songwriter Promo Cards are customizable social media assets that songwriters can create on promocards.byspotify.com. Songwriters search for their name, select their profile and choose a background color to…
When Silicon Valley Bank imploded in March, Sam Heshmati wasn’t naive enough to think that First Republic Bank — where he had worked for more than a decade and helped launch their startup practice — wouldn’t be affected. He recalls watching everything unfold at his former employer with both sadness and surprise. “When SVB went…
TechCrunch Disrupt 2023 is mere days away, people! We can’t wait to welcome you and watch the inspiration, collaboration and opportunities unfold. This epic event could not happen without the steadfast support of our partners. But they do more than support — they participate, they educate, they engage. The final four partners at TechCrunch Disrupt…
A clever new app called Slingshot is combining the serendipity of BeReal snaps with the friends-only photo sharing popularized by apps like Snapchat. But while the app’s inspirations are familiar, the way you interact with Slingshot offers something unique. As the name suggests, you pull down on the screen — as if pulling back on…
Arturo Villanueva spent over four years on Stripe’s financial partnerships team. During that time, he led partnerships with Visa, Mastercard, American Express, and regional banks across Latin America, struck strategic deals with JPMorgan Chase, Wells-Fargo, and Bank of America in the U.S., and led the underlying infrastructure build for the fintech giant’s cross-border payouts product, allowing…
A year ago, Stability AI, the London-based startup behind the open source image-generating AI model Stable Diffusion, quietly released Dance Diffusion, a model that can generate songs and sound effects given a text description of the songs and sound effects in question. Dance Diffusion was Stability AI’s first foray into generative audio, and it signaled…
Mecho Autotech, a startup offering automotive spare parts, vehicle repairs and maintenance services, has raised a $2.4 million pre-Series A round. The firm targets the Nigerian market, where 90% of the country’s more than 12 million registered cars (mainly used) require regular maintenance to avoid recurring breakdowns. Its primary business connects vehicle owners (individuals and…
Amazon Prime video is coming to certain vehicles that are equipped with Google built-in, including the all-electric Polestar 2 and eventually the Volvo EX90 — the latest example of streaming video services making its way into cars, trucks and SUVs. The new in-car app availability, along with several other features from Google’s Android for Cars…
From Tableau and Looker, to PowerBI and beyond, there are no shortage of business intelligence (BI) tools designed to help companies unlock insights from their vast swathes of data. But a newcomer has arrived on the scene with some fresh BI smarts in tow, aimed at more “technically-inclined” data teams. Founded out of Toronto, Canada,…
