The left-hand side of the slide has too much info (why are funding, product and customers on the team slide?)
Three things that Protecto could have improvedPitch deck design isn’t usually that important, but the design of this deck is particularly bad.
These case studies aren’t case studiesIn a 14-slide deck, Protecto wastes slide 4 as an interstitial (it just says “our platform”).
The full pitch deckIf you want your own pitch deck teardown featured on TechCrunch, here’s more information.
Also, check out all our Pitch Deck Teardowns all collected in one handy place for you!
Giant Ventures in January closed two new funds totaling $250 million that it will invest in startups on both sides of the Atlantic, and today, TechCrunch has learned exclusively that Frontline Ventures has also raised $200 million across two funds, named Frontline Growth and Frontline Seed.
Frontline has historically invested in both Europe and North America, and its new funds will continue to follow that strategy, betting on B2B software companies.
The new seed fund will favor European ventures, while the growth fund will focus on U.S. startups.
Expansion roadmapO’Donnell told TechCrunch that when it helps portfolio companies navigate expansion to another market, Frontline focuses on four aspects: timing, go-to-market strategy, talent, and organizational design and location.
That’s by order of importance, and a company’s location should be a derivative of the previous three aspects, O’Donnell said.
Rather than grimly assembling data about cancer deaths to predict outcomes in treatment, the founders of Cure51 had another idea.
Instead, the company assembles data about long term survivors of cancer, thus hoping to crack the code on what keeps people alive.
It’s now raised a €15 million Seed round led by Paris-based Sofinnova Partners.
Other investors in this round included: Hitachi Ventures GmbH, Life Extension Ventures, Xavier Niel, and Olivier Pomel, CEO, and co-founder of Datadog.
Both had previously worked in five well-known oncology centers, such as the Gustave Roussy Institute in Paris and the Vall d’Hebronin Barcelona.
Raising capital sounds simple: You hand over shares, investors hand over cash, and everyone then gets back to work.
She’s coming to TechCrunch’s Early Stage event next month on April 25 to not only present on early-stage fundraising topics, but also to answer your questions.
Early Stage is one of our most popular events, so don’t delay — I’ll see you in April, pen in hand, listening to Whiting.
Early Stage 2024 prices go up March 31.
Is your company interested in sponsoring or exhibiting at TechCrunch Early Stage 2024?
Appzone is one of the standout local fintech software providers for banks and fintechs, providing better pricing and flexibility.
As such, it rebranded to Zone, a licensed blockchain-enabled payment infrastructure company–and carved out its original banking-as-a-service business into a separate standalone company, Qore.
Today, Zone, its blockchain network that enables payments and acceptance of digital currencies, is announcing that it has raised $8.5 million in a seed round.
Therefore, the fintech is developing an interoperable payment infrastructure using blockchain technology — known for its ability to scale infinitely — to connect banks and fintech companies, facilitating transaction flow without intermediaries.
“We are excited by the potential for Zone’s technology to be replicated across borders to advance payment innovation globally.
Startups typically operate under tight budget constraints, and spending significant time and money on pitch deck design may not be the best use of limited resources.
Your mileage may vary, but your pitch deck does need to be machine-readable.
For reference, my AI-powered pitch deck tool gave this deck a 16.9% chance at raising funding.
“The stellar early customer traction, with some marquee logos, certainly helped!”The full pitch deckIf you want your own pitch deck teardown featured on TechCrunch, here’s more information.
Also, check out all our Pitch Deck Teardowns all collected in one handy place for you!
It’s hard to keep track of crypto’s technical development, but one thing hasn’t changed much: blockchain applications are notoriously hard to build.
This stems in part from their decentralized nature, resulting in a lack of uniform standards across different infrastructure pieces.
Initia, founded by a group of developers in their late 20s, is trying to bring more interoperability to multi-chain networks and simplify the process of creating app-specific blockchains, or app chains.
In layman’s speak, Initia is abstracting away app chains’ technical complexity, aiming to make them more friendly to both end users and app developers.
They paused the project after the FTX implosion and eventually changed tack to work on blockchain infrastructure.
Dubai-based early-stage venture capital firm COTU Ventures is announcing that it has raised $54 million for its inaugural fund to support startups in the Middle East from pre-seed to seed stages.
Founder and general partner Amir Farha revealed in an interview with TechCrunch that COTU Ventures is inclined slightly towards fintech and B2B software.
Noteworthy investments by COTU Ventures include Huspy, a UAE mortgage platform backed by Peak XV and Founders Fund, and Egyptian fintech startup MoneyHash.
While at Beco Capital, Farha and his partner returned the first fund following Uber’s acquisition of Careem.
By fostering such open dialogue, COTU Ventures aims to establish trust and strong connections with founders, enabling informed investment decisions.
In the latest development, three-year-old Hohm Energy, which connects homeowners and businesses with accredited solar installers, product suppliers, and embedded solar finance in South Africa, has raised $8 million in seed investment.
The funding, whose first tranche of $4.25 million came in Q4 2022, is the largest seed round for a tech startup in South Africa, according to Hohm Energy.
Hohm Energy says its solution was built as an alternative and sustainable energy source for over 7 million addressable households connected to South Africa’s national grid.
Hohm Energy would then generate a final engineering proposal and present it to its banking partners for financing approval.
“We are thrilled to announce our inaugural investment in Hohm Energy.
There’s a new generative AI startup based in Paris.
Bioptimus will leverage this unique data set to train its foundational model.
Creating new AI models is such a daunting task that creating a separate entity made more sense.
“As a ‘pure player’ in foundational models, Bioptimus is better set up to do this.”The startup has also signed a partnership with Amazon Web Services.
Now that Bioptimus is well funded, it’s time to work on the AI model and see what the biotech research community can do with it.
