Airbnb’s WeWork problem
Airbnb may be another overvalued “unicorn,” but it’s no WeWork. The Information this morning reported new Airbnb financials — indicating a massive increase in operating losses — that immediately call… Read more »
Category: Airbnb
Tourlane cofounder Julian Stiefel to speak at TechCrunch Disrupt Berlin this December
Back in May, Tourlane raised $47 million in its ongoing mission to address the complex problems that still exist today around booking group travel. Tourlane has become a major player… Read more »
Startups Weekly: Upfront Ventures bets on a bus service
Hello and welcome back to Startups Weekly, a weekend newsletter that dives into the week’s noteworthy news pertaining to startups and venture capital. Before I jump into today’s topic, let’s… Read more »
How to get people to open your emails
Julian Shapiro Contributor Share on Twitter Julian Shapiro is the founder of BellCurve.com, a growth marketing agency that trains you to become a marketing professional. He also writes at Julian.com…. Read more »
Work Life Ventures raises $5M for debut enterprise SaaS seed fund
Brianne Kimmel had no trouble transitioning from angel investor to general partner. Initially setting out to garner $3 million in capital commitments, Kimmel, in just two weeks’ time, closed on… Read more »
Starship Technologies CEO Lex Bayer on focus and opportunity in autonomous delivery
Starship Technologies is fresh off a recent $40 million funding round, and the robotics startup finds itself in a much-changed market compared to when it got its start in 2014…. Read more »
‘The Operators’: Finance in startups with Duda CFO Stephanie Hsiung and Zeus Living’s Head of Finance Mark Kang
Tim Hsia & Neil Devani Contributor Share on Twitter Tim Hsia is the CEO of Media Mobilize and a Venture Partner at Digital Garage. Neil Devani is an angel investor… Read more »
Startups Weekly: Diamond-encrusted disruption
Hello and welcome back to Startups Weekly, a weekend newsletter that dives into the week’s noteworthy startups and venture capital news. Before I jump into today’s topic, let’s catch up… Read more »
Fresh out of Y Combinator, Tandem lands millions from Andreessen Horowitz
Tandem, one of the most sought after companies to graduate from Y Combinator’s summer batch, will emerge from the accelerator program with a supersized seed round and an uncharacteristically high… Read more »
Revenue-based investing: A new option for founders who care about control
David Teten Contributor Share on Twitter David Teten is a Venture Partner with HOF Capital. He was previously a Partner for 8 years with HOF Capital and ff Venture Capital…. Read more »
Kobalt, Apple and smartwatches, Hadoop, customer support, and social work and AI
The Kobalt EC-1: How a Swedish saxophonist built Kobalt, the world’s next music unicorn My favorite pieces we host on Extra Crunch are our EC-1 series of in-depth profiles and… Read more »
What happened to the sharing economy?
A few years ago, Silicon Valley couldn’t stop using a trendy buzzword — the sharing economy. The good old top-down economic model with a clear separation between service providers and… Read more »
The rise of the new crypto “mafias”
Ash Egan Contributor Ash Egan leads crypto investing at Accomplice. He formerly was a VC at ConsenSys Ventures and Converge. In the early 2000s, journalists popularized the term “PayPal mafia”… Read more »
Ten cities ask EU for help to fight Airbnb expansion
Cities say short-term holiday lettings market is contributing to soaring long-term rents Ten European cities have demanded more help from the EU in their battle against Airbnb and other holiday… Read more »
Airbnb launches ‘Adventures’ for tourists seeking more thrills
Airbnb has debuted a new extension of its growing business in providing travel experiences in addition to temporary housing – it’s called Airbnb Adventures, and it’s effectively a collection of… Read more »
Slack narrows losses, displays healthy revenue growth
Workplace messaging powerhouse Slack filed an amended S-1 with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on Friday weeks ahead of a direct listing expected June 20. In the document, Slack… Read more »
How to trigger FOMO among VCs, plus PMs, SoftBank, and cheese
Fundraising 101: How to trigger FOMO among VCs Our media columnist Eric Peckham talked to a variety of successful founders on how they generate FOMO (i.e. fear of missing out)… Read more »
Startups Weekly: US companies raised $30B in Q1 2019
Let’s start this week’s newsletter with some data. Nationally, startups pulled in $30.8 billion in the first quarter of 2019, up 22 percent year-on-year, according to Crunchbase’s latest deal round-up…. Read more »
Airbnb hosts can cancel your reservation at the last minute as part of a ‘scam’ and there’s nothing you can do about it
BOOKING an Airbnb property can be a great way to get a cheap stay on holiday, and many holidaymakers using the service have found bargain deals. But some unlucky guests… Read more »
Startups Weekly: A much-needed unicorn IPO update
As I’m sure everyone reading this knows, female-founded businesses receive just over 2 percent of venture capital on an annual basis. Most of those checks are written to early-stage startups…. Read more »
Startups Weekly: Uber’s headline-grabbing week and sextech at SXSW
I spent the week at SXSW, Austin’s really, really huge technology, music, comedy and film festival. It’s my first year making the trek down here for the event, which I… Read more »
Zeus raises $24M to make you a living-as-a-service landlord
Cookie-cutter corporate housing turns people into worker drones. When an employee needs to move to a new city for a few months, they’re either stuck in bland, giant apartment complexes… Read more »
Startups Weekly: What’s up with YC? Plus, mobility layoffs and Airbnb’s grand plans
Where to begin… Netflix darling Marie Kondo is hitting up Sand Hill Road in search of $40 million to fund an ecommerce platform, Y Combinator is giving $150,000 to a… Read more »
Court dismisses Paris lawsuit against Airbnb for illegal listings
A court in Paris has dismissed a case against Airbnb, as Le Monde reported. Last month, the City of Paris sued Airbnb for 1,010 illegal listings. According to the mayor’s… Read more »
Airbnb, Automattic and Pinterest top rank of most acquisitive unicorns
Jason Rowley Contributor Jason Rowley is a venture capital and technology reporter for Crunchbase News. More posts by this contributor Companies raising supergiant VC aren’t getting any younger Coastal startups… Read more »
Uber Freight snags Airbnb, Box veterans as it eyes global expansion
Uber Freight, which helps truck drivers connect with shipping companies, has made two high-profile hires this month as it continues to scale up its app and plans for a global… Read more »
Startups Weekly: Even Gwyneth Paltrow had a hard time raising VC
I spent the week in Malibu attending Upfront Ventures’ annual Upfront Summit, which brings together the likes of Hollywood, Silicon Valley and Washington, DC’s elite for a two-day networking session… Read more »
Airbnb acquires Denmark’s Gaest to expand in bookings for meetings and offsites
Airbnb, now valued upwards of $30 billion and inching toward an IPO possibly as early as this year, has made an acquisition to continue to diversify its revenues beyond basic… Read more »
TechCrunch Conversations: Direct listings
Last April, Spotify surprised Wall Street bankers by choosing to go public through a direct listing process rather than through a traditional IPO. Instead of issuing new shares, the company simply… Read more »
Did unicorns like Lyft and Uber wait too long?
It was several years ago, at a tech conference in Laguna Beach, Ca., that the venture capitalist Bill Gurley issued one of what would become repeated warnings that startups were… Read more »