ShopMy, a marketing platform for content creators to connect with brands and monetize their content, announced today that it raised $18.5 million.
To date, creators have earned “tens of millions in commissions” on the platform, the company tells TechCrunch.
“He observed a significant disconnect in the social media ecosystem: influencers struggled to monetize their product recommendations effectively, and their followers didn’t have an easy path to purchase.
Chris viewed ShopMy as the solution, a bridge that transformed how influencers share and monetize their product recommendations,” Rein explains.
Even Instagram has embraced creator marketing, launching a marketplace tool for paid partnerships in 2022.
Amazon launched generative AI-powered features last year to help sellers quickly create listings by entering just a few words about the product.
The company is now making it easier for sellers to create listings if an item is already listed on their website.
The e-commerce giant’s new tool uses AI to parse details from an item’s URL on another site and create an Amazon listing.
In the latest announcement, Amazon said more than 100,000 sellers have tried generative AI tools.
Last year, Google launched a tool related to product imaginary and eBay introduced a feature that generated listings from product images.
Stashpad, a developer-focused “DM to yourself”-styled notebook app, is now pivoting to a docs app that you can use without logging in.
The company will still maintain its original notes app and call it “Stashpad Lists.”StashPad Docs is the company’s new offering that doesn’t require any login and supports Markdown formatting.
The product is browser first and document history is stored locally, so users can search for docs without querying the server.
They might do so even without fully acknowledging that Google Docs remains a big part of their workflow.”With this new product, Stashpad aims to attract both technical and non-technical users.
Plus, it sees a venture-sized opportunity for the docs product.
Simulations are an essential step in physical product engineering.
“Luminary’s real-time engineering approach empowers engineering teams to perform product simulation and analysis cycles in minutes, rather than weeks,” Lango said.
[This] results in improved time to market, faster insights, better design outcomes, increased team productivity and better use of valuable physical prototyping dollars.”AI-leaningLuminary isn’t exactly first-to-market with a cloud-based engineering simulation tool.
Lango met Alonso during summer 2019 through Sutter Hill Ventures, the private equity firm, where Lango was an entrepreneur in residence.
Sutter Hill sees a lucrative future in Luminary, evidently, as the startup’s customer base eclipses 33 organizations across the automotive, aerospace and defense and industrial equipment sectors.
There, he saw that AI-powered projects to prevent product issues would often fail because the AI wasn’t sufficiently fine-tuned.
“Without [the right solution], many different groups across the enterprise do siloed analyses about emerging quality issues.
“Product quality issues can have an impact on the end user if [the] issues aren’t addressed quickly and efficiently,” First told TechCrunch in an interview.
“We use a specialized AI to scan messy, unstructured and disconnected data across various systems to flag emerging recurring product quality issues,” First explained.
First asserted, however, that Axion will delete customer data within 30 days of receiving a request.
We had the idea of developing a device — a physical thing — that helps by breathing with you.
The device is designed to activate the parasympathetic nervous system, promoting relaxation without continuous app connectivity.
The device works without an app, so even if the Moonbird company were to disappear, the product itself will continue to work.
By focusing on activating the parasympathetic nervous system, the theory is that the device will help users achieve a state of relaxation and calm.
“The lack of subscription also means that you can share your device with other people if you want.”
The original version of Block Party was built on top of Twitter’s API to automate the process of blocking bad actors, trolls, harassers, and others.
However, Twitter’s API crackdown meant that Block Party’s ability to operate was immediately impacted.
That product, now on hiatus, has since been rebranded Block Party Classic.
Privacy Party will also act like middleware here, allowing users to interact with platforms and services to adjust their privacy settings with fewer clicks.
“They also present controls that you have including an additional level of control that automates finding and fixing privacy settings for you.”Chou did not say when Privacy Party would exit beta, but it’s free to use for the time being.
Yet another AI-powered fraud detection software provider is laying off staff.
Inscribe, whose platform works to detect fraud in areas like business underwriting, tenant screening, and onboarding, has cut just under 40% of its staff, which equates to dozens of employees.
San Francisco-based Inscribe.ai confirmed the headcount reduction to TechCrunch, noting that the AI advances in the financial services industry necessitated a pivot to a new product and direction for the company.
“2023 was a year of change for our customers and Inscribe,” explained Inscribe CEO and co-founder, Ronan Burke.
At the time, the company forecast it would double its then 50-person workforce over the coming 12 to 18 months.
Sunnyvale-based Brevian wants to make it easier for business users to build custom AI agents.
“When I saw ChatGPT and other things, for me, it was just: how is this applicable in the enterprise?
Then he went to LinkedIn, where he headed up the AI trust team before leaving in late 2022 to join Wagh in founding Brevian as its CTO.
“Our vision was to enable business users in the enterprise to be able to use AI to simplify their daily tasks.
2024 is the year of AI apps — and we just felt like they were so far ahead,” he told me.
And it is using an undisclosed portion of its cash reserve to acquire Regate, an accounting and financial automation platform.
Qonto originally started with online business accounts with debit cards specifically tailored for small and medium businesses.
After a while, Regate will be integrated in Qonto directly to improve several accounting automation features of Qonto, such as invoicing, accounts payables, accounts receivables, etc.
Qonto finds itself in a different position from Payfit, another French unicorn (or former unicorn) that provides a software-as-a-service tool focused on payroll.
As many fintech startups are struggling to raise a new funding round, Qonto could become a consolidator in the space.
