From Online payment to eCommerce

VR company Upload settles sexual harassment suit, though some still feel unsettled

 Upload, formerly UploadVR, the virtual reality startup at the center of a sexual harassment and wrongful termination lawsuit filed earlier this year, has settled the case with its former employee and is aiming to put the ensuing damage behind it....

23andMe hits $1.5B pre-money valuation in latest huge funding round

 Following up on the news of 23andMe’s huge upcoming financing round, TechCrunch has learned that the company is raising the new financing at a $1.5 billion pre-money valuation. This compares to a $1 billion valuation in its last private round.  Dan Primack over at Axios reported the same thing this morning, but we’ve heard from our sources the number is indeed accurate.… Read More

Cap tables, share structures, valuations, oh my! A case study of early-stage funding

 For many entrepreneurs, especially first-time founders, raising outside capital can be daunting. Between all of the new vocabulary and the very real legal implications of the agreements being signed, it’s easy to get overwhelmed. Indeed, raising outside money is one of the more esoteric aspects of being an entrepreneur — but it doesn’t need to be confusing. Read More

Tenka Labs raises another $2M to get its kids’ LEGO engineering kits in retailers

 Tenka Labs co-founder John Schuster is no stranger to walking friends through building gadgets using Arduino, an open-source hardware controller — except they might be great software engineers, but not understand the actual circuitry. But Tenka Labs, which builds simple kits that help young students create small gadgets with the use of motors and other bits that connect to legos, is… Read More

Scribd offers an ‘Essential Student Bundle’, including an NYT subscription, for $1.87 per week

Scribd Essential Student Bundle Scribd is giving college and graduate students access to its library of digital content, plus a subscription to The New York Times, at what it says is a 40 percent discount on the combination. CEO Trip Adler told me students already make up a significant portion of the subscribers who pay to read e-books, audiobooks, magazine articles and more. (We’ve described Scribd as an… Read More

Snowflake’s newest cloud data warehouse takes aim at regulated industries

 Snowflake, makers of a cloud data warehouse service, announced a new virtual private product that should appeal to highly regulated companies like financial services and healthcare. In fact, the company also announced that one of the product’s earliest customers, Capital One, will be investing $5 million in Snowflake as a strategic investor as a result of this new approach. Most… Read More