The nation state has survived wars, plagues, and upheaval, but it won’t survive digital nomads, not if people like Karoli Hindriks have something to say about it. Hindriks is the founder of Jobbatical, a platform that allows digital nomads to find work in other countries and helps with the logistics of getting there. The company also embodies a new world of highly-skilled, global… Read More

 French startup Sqreen recently launched a Security Hub with dozens of plugins to put you in control of the security of your web app. In many ways, it feels like enabling tasks on popular automation service IFTTT. Sqreen participated in TechCrunch’s Startup Battlefield and Y Combinator’s current batch. The vision of the product hasn’t changed. Sqreen lets you protect your… Read More

 A mapping startup based in Missoula, Mont., which allows users to download sophisticated offline topographic maps outlining public and private lands and a number of other features geared towards hunting, fishing and camping, has pulled in its first major outside funding. onXmaps has closed a $20.3 million Series A round led by Summit Partners. Bessemer Venture Partners, Millennium… Read More

 Uber is preparing to sell its Southeast Asian business to Grab in exchange for a stake in the Singaporean ridesharing company that has a big presence in that region, according to a new report from CNBC. Read More

 Home Made, which is focused exclusively on London lettings for properties in the £500,000-plus range, has raised £850,000 in seed funding. The round is led by private equity firm Tethys Equity and is said to give the young company a £4.3 million post-money valuation. Read More

 French startup Assur.com lets you find and compare all sorts of insurance products without having to enter all your personal information. While insurance aggregators are nothing new, they usually ask you for your email address, phone number and more. And chances are those companies are going to spam you with offers.But Assur.com has a different approach as you don’t have to enter any… Read More

 Fandor has expanded its executive team, promoting General Counsel and Chief Distribution Officer Felice Oper to the role of COO, and appointing TS Ramakrishnan as its Chief Product Engineering Officer. Oper joined the company in 2015, around the same time that Larry Aidem took over as CEO. Aidem, who previously worked with Oper at HBO, said that her role at Fandor has expanded organically,… Read More

 H-E-B has acquired Favor, the on-demand delivery service out of Texas. Favor will continue to operate as an independent wholly owned subsidiary of the grocery chain. The company first launched in 2013, bringing a Texas-tailored approach to on-demand delivery. While many on-demand services, such as Postmates, focus on high-density areas like NYC and San Francisco, Favor built a product that… Read More

 The Rise of the Rest seed fund’s first round of startup investments cover eight states that are usually overlooked by tech investors, including Kentucky, South Carolina and Ohio. The $150 million fund was launched in December by Steve Case and J.D. Vance, with backing from many of America’s most influential businesspeople, to support tech ecosystems outside of Silicon Valley, New… Read More

 When I first heard of Blinkist, a service that breaks down recent nonfiction books to easily digestible snippets, I was afraid it would turn out to be some machine-learning-driven auto-summary thing. But in talking to co-founder Niklas Jansen, I was pleasantly surprised to learn that the company is still very much people-powered — and in fact, that may be the root of its continuing success. Read More

 Failure doesn’t usually happen “to” startups. It happens when founders rationalize problems until it’s too late. Attack problems early and the startup will advance. Rationalize that the problems don’t exist and you’ll just be another depressing startup post-mortem. Read More

 Roche, the global pharmaceutical company from Switzerland, today announced it will scoop up Flatiron Health, a startup analyzing real-time oncology data to help cancer patients and doctors, in a $1.9 billion deal. Flatiron has also confirmed the deal to TechCrunch. Read More

Sramana Mitra: Of your ventures that have raised venture money, have they raised venture money from these $75 million to $100 million funds, or have they raised money from the bigger funds? Venktesh...

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 It’s no secret that the cryptocurrency market cap has grown faster than the broader crypto industry. This means that the options for tools to help hold, track and manage your cryptocurrency are still pretty slim. CoinTracker is one of the recently launched startups trying to help. Part of YC’s Winter ’18 class, it’s a platform to track your crypto across all… Read More

 The ARCEP just published a thorough 65-page report (embedded below) about the devices we use every day. The report says that devices give you a portion of the internet and prevent an open internet. “With net neutrality, we spend all our time cleaning pipes, but nobody is looking at faucets,” ARCEP president Sébastien Soriano told me. “Everybody assumes that the devices that… Read More

 Stem cells derived from a human placenta hold the key to unlocking a myriad of potentials in regenerative medicine and are the focus of X-Prize and Singularity University founder Peter Diamandis’ new endeavor. Called Celularity, the startup is a spinout from Celgene, a global biopharmaceutical company creating gene therapies. Diamandis teamed up with Dr. Robert Hariri, the founder of… Read More

For entrepreneurs interested to meet and chat with Sramana Mitra in person, please join us for our weekly informal group meetups. If you are living in the San Francisco Bay Area or are just in town...

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 French startup Lydia is raising a $16.1 million round (€13 million) led by CNP Assurances with existing investors XAnge, New Alpha AM, Oddo BHF and Groupe Duval also participating.Lydia isn’t the first startup that wants to replace PayPal, and also probably not the last one. But it’s clear that the company is slowly becoming mainstream in France. The company first focused on… Read More

Sramana Mitra: What is also becoming very popular is virtual collaboration. I run a virtual company. My team is spread all around the world. There’s pretty much no friction. We have a very seamless...

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In case you missed it, you can listen to the recording here:

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