Scratchpad announces $3.6M seed to put work space on top of Salesforce

One thing that annoys sales people is entering data into a CRM like Salesforce because it’s time spent not selling. Part of the problem is Salesforce is a database and as such is not necessarily designed for speed. Scratchpad wants to simplify that process by creating a workspace on top …...Read More

Chargebee raises $55 million to help businesses move to subscriptions

Chargebee, which helps businesses set up and manage their billing, subscription, revenue operations and compliance, said on Tuesday it has raised $55 million in a new financing round as it looks to accelerate its expansion in global markets. The new financing round, a Series F, for the San Francisco and …...Read More

Tokyo-based virtual reality game developer Thirdverse gets $8.5 million Series A

Thirdverse, the virtual reality game developer behind “Swords of Gargantua,” has raised $8.5 million in Series A funding. The round was led by JAFCO, with participation from Presence Capital, Sisu Ventures and Incubate Fund, and will be used for hiring, co-founder Masaru Ohnogi told TechCrunch. Based in Tokyo, Thirdverse was …...Read More

SpaceX successfully launches another Starlink mission, with over 700 satellites launched to date

SpaceX has launched yet another flight of 60 of its Starlink broadband internet satellites. The launch took off from Kennedy Space Center in Florida at 7:29 AM EDT (4:29 AM PDT) this morning, after having been delayed three times earlier due to scrubs – twice because of weather, and one …...Read More

Tipalti receives $150M at a $2B+ valuation after its accounts payable platform sees a surge in use

Digital transformation has been one of the big enterprise themes of 2020: organizations are doubling down on cloud services both to link up suddenly remote teams and centralize apps, documents and data in a more efficient way. Today, one of the startups that has filled out that story with a …...Read More

Spotify’s new Soundtrap capture app offers collaborative voice notes for songwriters

Acquired in 2017, Soundtrap more or less serves a similar role as Anchor under the larger Spotify banner — albeit largely focused on music creation, instead of podcasting. The company’s software of the same name is a cloud-based service designed to let musicians remotely collaborate on a song, track by …...Read More

Spacebit books a second trip to the Moon via NASA’s commercial lunar payload program

UK-based robotic rover startup Spacebit has booked a second payload delivery to the Moon, aboard the Nova-C lander that Intuitive Machines is planning to send in 2021 as part of NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program. Spacebit already has a berth aboard the Astrobotic Peregrine lander that’s set to …...Read More

Apple will launch its online store in India next week

Apple will launch its online store in India on September 23, bringing a range of services directly to customers in the world’s second largest smartphone market for the first time in over 20 years since it began operations in the country. The company, which currently relies on third-party online and …...Read More

TikTok’s Chinese rival Kuaishou becomes a popular online bazaar

In China, short video apps aren’t just for mindless time killing. These services are becoming online bazaars where users can examine products, see how they are grown and made, and ask sellers questions during live sessions. Kuaishou, the main rival of TikTok’s Chinese version (Douyin), announced that it accumulated 500 …...Read More

Benchmark’s Peter Fenton: ’10 to 20 years of innovation just got pulled forward’

Earlier today at TechCrunch Disrupt, venture capitalist Peter Fenton joined us to talk about a variety of issues. Among them, we discussed how he’s putting his stamp on Benchmark now that, 15 years after joining the storied firm, he’s its most senior member. Fenton said that he’s mostly focused on …...Read More