European VC firm Pale Blue Dot plans to fund 40 ‘planet-positive’ startups Pale Blue Dot, a newly outed European venture capital firm focused on climate tech, announced this week the first closing of its debut fund at €53 million. Targeting pre-seed and seed stage startups, the firm says it will consider software […]

The complicated calculus of taking Facebook’s venture money Facebook is reportedly getting into the venture capital game, but for young entrepreneurs working in social media, ignoring or deleting that particular friend request could be the right call. According to a report in Axios, the company is building up a corporate fund under […]

TechCrunch’s top 10 picks from Techstars’ May virtual demo days A month after TechCrunch watched, discussed and parsed the startups from Techstars’ April batch of virtual demo days, we’re back with the handy May edition. Over the past few days, TechCrunch has been catching up by watching the shared video pitches from […]

Partners at B2B European VC henQ discuss remote work’s biggest advantages HenQ, an Amsterdam-based VC that invests in European B2B software startups typically at seed and Series A, recently disclosed the first close of its fourth fund at €70 million. The final close is expected to top out at between €75-€85 million […]

Investors buy The DiPP as accelerators go virtual Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines. This week we had a choice of all sorts of news, but as we cut the show together as a group Danny pushed all the funding […]

Changing policy, Y Combinator cuts its pro rata stake and makes investments case-by-case In a message posted to its internal communications channel earlier this week, the massive startup accelerator Y Combinator said it will change the terms of its own PPP (the YC pro rata investment program) and investing in companies raising […]

Silicon Valley restructuring veteran says his firm is winding down up to 3 startups a day Marty Pichinson gets called a lot of things: Silicon Valley’s undertaker, its terminator, a grave digger. These aren’t meant as slights; Pichinson is the founder of Sherwood Partners, a restructuring firm that Bay Area venture firms […]

Refurbished electronics startup Refurbed raises M round, led by Evli Growth Partners Renewed phones, laptops and tablets can be as much as 40% cheaper than their brand new cousins, working equally as well and, because they have been saved from the scrapheap, are therefore a great deal more environmentally friendly. Players in […]