forerunner ventures
Daydream rakes in $50M seed funding to build an AI-powered search engine suited for e-commerce
Online shopping trends are expected to stay strong this year, but e-commerce is more fragmented than ever. With brands selling on so many platforms — from TikTok Shop, to established…
Topline Pro grabs $12M in new capital to help home service businesses get discovered
The company added a social media hub for automated posts and ads as well as an AI-enabled “Super Assistant” to help with navigating through the application and digitizing customer interactions.
Forerunner Ventures sees a future full of ‘digitally native franchises’
Forerunner Ventures first made its name in the venture world by betting on once-nascent startups like Jet, Bonobos and Glossier when it was far easier to build a digitally native…
Say hello to the kick-ass final agenda for the TechCrunch+ stage at Disrupt 2022
TechCrunch is bringing our flagship event, Disrupt, back to the real world this year, which means we’re hard at work on our big October 18-20 shindig. Founders, investors, tech denizens,…
Balance raises $56M to tip the one-click checkout scales in favor of B2B merchants
The company is working now with hundreds of merchants and dozens of B2B marketplaces, a 10-time increase since last year.
How to use grants and partnerships to fund early stage robotic startups
Attabotics provides warehouses with a novel robotic solution that is reinventing supply chain management. The company has attracted investment from a wide range of investors, including Gordon Food Service, the…
Eclipse Foods isn’t out to substitute dairy — it’s on a mission to replace it
The company’s ice cream mix is the base for Smashburger’s new non-dairy milkshakes, representing “the first nationally available non-dairy milkshakes at a fast-casual restaurant chain.”
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How the myth of the ‘girlboss’ harms emerging women in tech
On Lafayette Street in SoHo, young, fashionable women lined up around the block to enter a minimalist, millennial oasis, the most perfect Instagram feed brought to life. Staff members glided around the store in pastel pink suits, each embodying the kind of girl that Glossier made us all want to…
Forerunner, Bezos back Arrived, a startup that lets you buy into single-family rentals for ‘as little as $100’
Arrived has raised $25 million in a Series A funding round led by Forerunner Ventures to give people the ability to buy shares in single-family rentals with “as little as…
Sika lets patients ‘hack’ their health savings accounts to buy wellness products tax-free
What if you could buy a Peloton with pre-tax dollars? How about vitamins and supplements? Skincare products? Or even mattresses and massages? All of those may likely qualify as purchases…
Glow Labs raises seed round to help NFT creators reward their loyal customers
The NFT market was worth $41 billion at the end of last year — nearly as large as the conventional art market by some estimates — and it’s expected to…
The Expert, which provides video consultations with top designers, expands into e-commerce to become what co-founder Leo Seigal referred to as “Farfetch for home.”
Kirsten Green on selling to consumers in the metaverse: brands should ‘get in there’
When Forerunner Ventures was founded in 2012, traditional brands still reigned supreme, and most of us shopped in physical spaces. Firm founder Kirsten Green, who was earlier an equity research…
Cococart sweetens the process for e-commerce companies to take orders immediately
Cococart’s tools enable merchants to set up an online store in minutes with no code, no design and no app downloads.
Headless commerce company fabric sews up unicorn milestone following new round
Fabric offers over 300 commerce APIs and associated framework to connect a company’s sales channel to one place and the ability to use the entire commerce suite or individual products.
Dutch raises $20M to scale its telemedicine platform for pets
Virtual veterinarian care platform Dutch has raised $20 million in Series A funding led by Forerunner Ventures and Eclipse Ventures. The San Francisco-based company’s latest round comes seven months after…
Glossier just laid off one-third of its corporate employees, mostly in tech
Glossier, the popular beauty brand led by former blogger Emily Weiss, let go of 80 of its corporate employees today, according to an internal email obtained by Modern Retail. The…
Calii bags $22.5M to build Latin America’s grocery shopping future
The mobile grocery app automates the supply chain, enabling customers to choose over 5,000 products delivered via a network of micro-fulfillment centers in less than two hours.
Ampla raises $40M Series A for its business of providing credit to commerce brands
Ampla Technologies, a startup that provides financing to small-to-medium sized consumer-facing businesses, announced today it has raised $40 million in a Series A round of funding co-led by VMG Partners…
For those who want to turn travel into dollars, Fora can help start your next career
Fora is one of the latest startups seeing venture capital attraction to push more of the travel industry into the digital age and tapping into the creator economy.
Curated wants to be the expert in your pocket when making that next big purchase
Consumers answer a few questions about the products they are looking for, and Curated will match them to a category expert who provides a list of personalized recommendations.
Humane, a stealthy hardware and software startup co-founded by an ex-Apple designer and engineer, raises $100M
A stealthy startup co-founded by a former senior designer from Apple and one of its ex-senior software engineers has picked up a significant round of funding to build out its…
Clay debuts a new tool to help people better manage their business and personal relationships
A new startup called Clay, backed by $8 million in seed funding, has built a system designed to help you be more thoughtful with the people in your life, which…
Metafy adds $5.5M to its seed round as the market for games coaching grows
This morning Metafy, a distributed startup building a marketplace to match gamers with instructors, announced that it has closed an additional $5.5 million to its $3.15 million seed round. Call…
Gwyneth Paltrow invests in The Expert, a video marketplace for high-end interior designers
The pandemic-induced lockdowns halted many a home decoration project, but the irony was that our homes became even more important. But where to get ideas to decorate? Home décor experts…
Swyft raises $17.5 million to bring same-day delivery to all the retailers that aren’t Amazon
Thanks to major players like Amazon and Walmart, we’ve become accustomed to next- or same-day delivery. But the pandemic has also renewed our interest in buying from smaller businesses and…
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5 creator economy VCs see startup opportunities in monetization, discovery and much more
Everyone knows YouTubers and other creators are popular with internet users of all ages. But today, these influencers also have real businesses powered by a range of software tools and service providers who help weave videos, pictures, clips, memes and other types of content into sustainable success. The pandemic added…
Jared Leto, Scooter Braun and Troy Carter are backing Moment House, a startup recreating live events… digitally
A pitch to offer artists a way to give geo-fenced, live events to fans around the world has brought the new Los Angeles startup Moment House $1.5 million in seed…
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To reach scale, Juni Learning is building a full-stack edtech experience
Juni Learning connects kids with math and science tutors, but co-founder Vivian Shen would prefer not to be lumped in with other edtech startups, despite the sector’s pandemic-born boom. “We’re not just in the middle to take a few percentage points off of each side and pretend like we’re delivering…
If 2020 hasn’t been wild enough, there’s an extra special twist going down at Disrupt 2020 beyond the fact that, for the first time ever, the conference will be fully…
