The lowly lamppost might be a better option: they’re everywhere, and they have all the wiring needed to make curbside charging seamless.
One startup from New York City, Voltpost, has been working on a product that retrofits existing street lampposts to enable EV charging.
On Thursday, it introduced its lamppost charger after a year of design and development.
Voltpost’s charger docks at hand-level on the lamppost shroud, and the retractable cable has an anchor eight-feet up to keep it off the ground.
As is the case with just about every EV charger network, there’s an app to oversee charging sessions, including payments.
Checkr, a 10-year-old startup that offers employee background checks and was last valued at $5 billion in April 2022, has laid off 382 employees as companies are not significantly hiring talent.
TechCrunch exclusively learned that Checkr conducted the layoffs across all departments and different levels on Tuesday.
“In response to economic conditions that have impacted companies’ hiring, we made the difficult and painful decision to reduce the size of our team.
This will allow us to operate more efficiently and ensure the long-term health of our business,” a Checkr spokesperson said in the statement.
The job cuts — which affected 32% of the company’s workforce — came nearly two years after Checkr announced the acquisition of Inflection, the startup behind GoodHire, a background-checking platform for small- and mid-sized businesses.
It’s easy to assume the e-commerce ship has sailed when you consider we have giant platforms like Shopify, Woocommerce, and Wix dominating the sector.
E-commerce platform, ikas, has raised $20 million in a Series A funding round as it seeks to expand its operations into new markets in Europe.
The company currently operates in Turkey and Germany, and says its platform simplifies store management for companies that want to have a digital presence.
Also investing in ikas is Re-Pie Asset Management, which has grocery delivery startup Getir in its portfolio as well.
The round saw participation from ikas’ existing investor Revo Capital, best known as the first institutional investor in Getir, Param, Midas and Roamless.
WordPress.com owner Automattic is acquiring Beeper, the company behind the iMessage-on-Android solution that was referenced by the Department of Justice in its antitrust lawsuit against Apple.
One of the reasons why there are no other people building this type of app is it costs a surprisingly large amount of money to build a damn good chat app,” Migicovsky noted.
As for Beeper’s products, the company has now briefed the DOJ on what happened when Apple blocked its newer app, Beeper Mini, which aimed to bring iMessage to Android.
Beeper on Android launches to allThe company is instead releasing an updated version of its core app, Beeper, on Android.
In this rewritten version of Beeper, the company is starting to roll out fully end-to-end encrypted messages across Signal.
Built World Startup Happy HourHosted By: Suffolk Technologies and TriNetTime: April 23, 430pm to 630pmDescription: Calling all innovators shaping the built environment!
So enjoy our historic city before TechCrunch Early Stage and join fellow founders following in the footsteps of our nation’s early founders.
We welcome startup founders seeking innovative solutions to maintain wellness while achieving the optimal point of productivity for those crucial momentum moments throughout your startup journey.
Startup Happy Hour with OnshapeHosted By: Onshape (PTC Inc.)Time: April 24, 630pm to 9pmDescription: Join us the week of TechCrunch Early Stage 2024 at PTC’s headquarters for an exciting happy hour for founders!
The party will start at 5:30pm, immediately following TechCrunch Early Stage 2024 on April 25th.
Kiki World, a beauty startup launched last year, wants consumers to co-create products and co-own the company with the help of web3 technology.
Kiki co-founder Jana Bobosikova said she believes that being a loyal user of a brand in the Web 2.0 world could be a net negative experience.
Kiki is flipping that model by allowing its community members to vote on the features they want before the beauty products are made.
Although members’ product votes are recorded on Ethereum, Bobosikova said some participants don’t need to know they are taking action on blockchain.
But, as Simpson pointed out, Kiki has plans to eventually expand beyond the world of beauty.
Indian ride-hailing giant Ola is shutting down its operations in the UK, Australia and New Zealand, six years after expanding to international markets as it shifts focus to shoring up its domestic business ahead of an initial public offering.
An Ola spokesperson told TechCrunch that the SoftBank-backed ride-hailing startup sees “immense opportunity for expansion in India,” where it operates in hundreds of cities and offers a range of transportation options, including two-wheelers.
“With this clear focus, we’ve reassessed our priorities and have decided to shut down our overseas ride-hailing business in its current form in the UK, Australia and New Zealand,” the spokesperson added.
The startup plans to file for an initial public offering after the public listing of Ola Electric, the leading electric two-wheeler brand in India that spun out of Ola.
Ola Electric is looking to raise $662 million from its IPO in India, according to paperwork it filed late last year.
Neurovalens now has two medical devices approved for prescription by doctors in the U.S.: one to treat generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) and another targeting insomnia.
Its GAD device was approved just last week, and its device for insomnia received FDA clearance last October.
But he confirms the company is applying for medical device clearances in the U.K. and EU, too,saying it expects to get its first stamp of approval for doctors in Europe to prescribe its insomnia device as a treatment later this year.
The startup says these are areas of the brain are responsible for functions like metabolic control, stress response and circadian regulation.
Neurovalens is the first company that’s focused on noninvasive direct stimulation of the vestibular nerve, per McKeown.
TechCrunch is searching for 200 trailblazing startups to feature in the Startup Battlefield 200 at TechCrunch Disrupt in San Francisco this October.
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The only way early-stage, pre-series A startups can exhibit on the show floor at Disrupt is through Startup Battlefield, and the only way to become a Startup Battlefield finalist is to be selected for Startup Battlefield 200.
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Heya, folks, welcome to Week in Review (WiR), TechCrunch’s newsletter recapping the noteworthy happenings in tech over the past several days (and change).
Famed startup accelerator Y Combinator had its Demo Days, and the venture desk took it all in with an appropriately skeptical eye.
Also this week, Microsoft and Quantinuum, a quantum computing startup, made a scientific breakthrough — or so they claim.
NewsCanoo paid for its CEO’s jet: Kirsten reports that EV startup Canoo paid the rent for the CEO’s private jet — $1.7 million— in 2023.
Bonus roundNSFW on X: The social media company has confirmed that authorized users on the platform can create NSFW communities, ahead of a change that’ll see all NSFW content on X filtered by default.
