Blickfeld, a Munich-based startup developing a low-cost light detection and ranging (LiDAR) system to let autonomous vehicles “see,” has raised $4.25 million in seed funding. Read More

 French startup iAdvize raised another $37.6 million (€32 million) from Idinvest, Bpifrance and Quadrille Capital. The company wants to convert casual website visitors into clients. Thanks to iAdvize, companies can track what you’re doing and engage with you to convince you that you should open a bank account, buy a coat or upgrade your subscription. With today’s funding round,… Read More

 Wibbitz, which uses artificial intelligence to create short videos based on text news stories, has raised $20 million in Series C funding. The money comes from some of big names in the media world, with Bertelsmann Digital Media Investments (a subsidiary of German media conglomerate Bertelsmann) leading the round and participation from The Weather Channel, The Associated Press and TF1.… Read More

 Shift Technology is raising a Series B round of $28 million from Accel and General Catalyst. Accel had already led the company’s previous round. Existing investors Elaia Partners and Iris Capital are also participating in today’s round. Read More

 European fintech startup N26 has plans to expand beyond Europe. The company’s co-founder and CEO Valentin Stalf is announcing today at the Money20/20 conference that N26 is going to launch in the U.S. around mid-2018 and has hired a handful of people who are already working in New York. Read More

 A year ago the Midwest seemed on the cusp of a renaissance. Small towns and cities from Pittsburgh to Omaha had perfected the YC model of accelerator creation and low-cost/high-impact funding. The ecosystems have cropped up everywhere there is a coffee shop or an artisanal sandwich truck and the idea of “doing a startup” vs. going to work for some corporate behemoth is a well-worn… Read More

 Hearsay Systems is announcing that it has acquired technology and intellectual property from Mast Mobile. The Mast service allowed businesses to manage work and personal numbers on a single mobile phone, and to connect those phones to their customer database. It was backed by Samsung, FirstMark Capital and others. Hearsay, meanwhile, offers marketing and communication tools for the… Read More

Attention deficit disorder of our online universe has some direct impact on online learning. Read on for more. Sramana Mitra: Let’s start by introducing our audience to yourself as well as to the...

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 Affirm is rolling out an app to make it easier to pay for large purchases in monthly payments. The concept has been in beta testing and it is now being made available widely. The company was started by PayPal co-founder Max Levchin.  He believes that his business promotes better fiscal responsibility than traditional credit cards. He says Affirm’s business is different from the… Read More

 Cities, regions and states are throwing everything at Amazon in the hopes the giant company will pick them to house its second headquarters. Amazon says 238 cities submitted proposals and many cities included sizzle videos in their pitch. Here are the videos from Detroit, Boston, Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, Las Vegas, Atlanta, and Dallas and Fort Worth. Each are different. Some show building… Read More

 Independently-owned hotels sometimes fall through the cracks of the hospitality industry because they struggle to compete with major chains, but don’t belong on Airbnb or HomeAway. Zuzu Hospitality Solutions bridges the gap in Asia by providing essential revenue management and marketing services to small hotels while allowing them preserve their own brands. The Singapore-based startup… Read More

We’re doing a deep dive into the current seed investment eco-system and talking to our investor friends about what they’re looking for. Here, you can hear the perspective of Padmaja Ruparel of Indian...

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 Fintech startup TransferWise has built a solid reputation when it comes to transparency. The startup just announced new fees for transfers initiated from the U.K. And it’s quite hard to understand if transfers are going to be cheaper or not after the change. The company claims that in most cases transfers should be cheaper. But it’s a bit more complicated than that. TransferWise… Read More

 WeWork, the behemoth co-working company valued at $20 billion, has today announced the acquisition of Flatiron School. Flatiron School is a coding education platform that offers both online and offline classes to folks who want a career in the world of tech. The coding academy was launched in 2012 and has raised more than $14 million since inception, according to Crunchbase. The terms of the… Read More

 Nested, the U.K. estate agent that provides a cash advance to help you buy a new house before you’ve sold your old one, has raised £36 million in further funding. The round was led by Rocket Internet’s Global Founders Capital, and brings the less than two year old startup’s total funding to just shy of £50 million. Read More

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

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The MarTech space is getting bigger and bigger. About 5,000 companies are a part of the MarTech landscape from just 150 in 2011. With its latest acquisition of Gigya, SAP is getting deeper into the...

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You’ve heard me say over and over again that niches make for great business opportunities. In this story, you will read how an entrepreneur with deep domain knowledge in the film industry created a...

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 Countingup, a new fintech startup from Tim Fouracre, who previously founded cloud accounting software Clear Books, wants to simplify the life of sole traders by reinventing the business bank account. Specifically, Fouracre’s vision is that for one-person enterprises, business banking and accounting software should be merged so that book keeping and filing accounts can be automated. Read More