Fintech startup N26 wants to compete with traditional banks on all fronts. And it means providing a useful web interface to view your past transactions, transfer money and more. Most users likely interact with N26 through the mobile app. But it doesn’t mean web apps are useless. Contrary to Revolut, N26 has had a web
Europe
It’s very hard to know what the effects of Brexit are “on the ground”. Local news no longer has much of a business model to concentrate on specific subjects or campaigns. Social media is a mess of local facebook groups which only locals can see. MPs often ignore email / online campaigns from constituents. The
Timehop has disclosed a security breach that has compromised the personal data (names and emails) of 21 million users (essentially its entire user base). Around a fifth of the affected users — or 4.7M — have also had a phone number that was attached to their account breached in the attack. The startup, whose service
What a day. Yesterday, hundreds of people gathered in Zug, Switzerland for TechCrunch Sessions: Blockchain. In addition to some of the key people of the Ethereum Foundation, the team interviewed the entrepreneurs behind Binance, Coinbase, ConsenSys, CryptoKitties and many other organizations. The event was packed with interesting content. But if you couldn’t be there in
Booksy, a Poland-based booking application for the beauty business, has raised $13.2 million in a series B effort to drive global growth. The company, founded in 2014 by Stefan Batory and Konrad Howard, is currently seeing 2.5 million bookings per month. The company raised from Piton Capital, OpenOcean, Kulczyk Investments, and Zach Coelius. Batory, an
The European Parliament has been making its presence felt today. As well as reopening democratic debate around a controversial digital copyright reform proposal by voting against it being fast-tracked, MEPs have adopted a resolution calling for the suspension of the EU-US Privacy Shield. The parliamentarians’ view is that the data transfer mechanism does not provide
A 318-278 majority of MEPs in the European Parliament has just voted to reopen debate around a controversial digital copyright reform proposal — meaning it will now face further debate and scrutiny, rather than be fast-tracked towards becoming law via the standard EU trilogue negotiation process. Crucially it means MEPs will have the chance to
When long time Uber employee and head of Uber’s food delivery business in Europe, Middle East and Africa, Jambu Palaniappan, quit the on-demand juggernaut, it was let slip that he planned to join a European venture capital firm, but it wasn’t clear which. Until now. TechCrunch has learned from several sources in the European early-stage
Entrepreneur First (EF), the London-HQ’d company builder that invests in individuals “pre-team, pre-idea” to help those individuals found new startups, is continuing to expand internationally. After adding an outpost and program in Singapore, Berlin and Hong Kong, in addition to London, the so-called talent-first investor is setting up shop in Paris. Quelle surprise. The latest
Technology is the proverbial double-edged sword. And an experimental European research project is ensuring this axiom cuts very close to the industry’s bone indeed by applying machine learning technology to critically sift big tech’s privacy policies — to see whether AI can automatically identify violations of data protection law. The still-in-training privacy policy and contract
Draper Esprit, the publicly-listed VC firm based in London, is putting down further roots across Europe in cooperation with German VC Earlybird. The “strategic partnership” sees Draper invest an initial €18 million in the latest Earlybird Fund VI (which closed this week at €175 million, above its initial target, apparently), with a commitment to invest
Facebook announced this morning that the London-based team at Bloomsbury AI will be joining the company. My colleague Steve O’Hear broke the news about the acquisition, reporting that Facebook would deploy the team and technology to assist in its efforts to fight fake news and address other content issues. In fact, Bloomsbury AI co-founder and
People have long wondered if one of Amazon’s goals in video and advertising — two key areas in Amazon’s media strategy — ultimately would be to bring the two together, with Amazon-powered ads running in video streams also served by Amazon. A job ad in the U.K. appears to indicate that the company might be
1. Accedo2. Acer3. Airtel4. Alcatel/TCL5. Alibaba**6. Amazon*7. Apple*8. AT&T9. Blackberry10. Dell11. DNP12. Docomo13. Garmin14. Gemalto*15. HP/Palm16. HTC17. Huawei18. INQ19. Kodak20. LG21. MediaTek/ Mstar22. Microsoft23. Miyowa /Hape Esia24. Motorola/Lenovo25. Mozilla**26. Myriad*27. Nexian28. Nokia*29. Nuance30. O231. Opentech ENG32. Opera Software**33. OPPO34. Orange35. Pantech36. PocketNet37. Qualcomm38. Samsung*39. Sony40. Sprint41. T-Mobile42. TIM43. Tobii*44. U2topia*45. Verisign46. Verizon47. Virgin Mobile48. Vodafone*49.
Perhaps rightly, there has long been a perception that Google-owned Deepmind has been the most aggressive in hoovering up a lot of the U.K.’s best talent in artificial intelligence, but now Facebook appears to be turning its eye to the country. TechCrunch understands that the social network behemoth is acquiring London-based Bloomsbury AI, a startup
If you’re a UX designer you won’t need this article to tell you about dark pattern design. But perhaps you chose to tap here out of a desire to reaffirm what you already know — to feel good about your professional expertise. Or was it that your conscience pricked you? Go on, you can be
In partnership with TechCrunch, The Europas Unconference & Awards, features smaller breakout sessions on key subjects for startups, followed by a glittering awards show for the hottest startups in Europe, based on voting by expert judges and the industry itself. Plus loads of networking opportunities with investors, and the super-fun Pitch Rolette pitch competition. See
French startup Doctrine is raising a $11.6 million funding round (€10 million) from existing investors Otium Venture and Xavier Niel. Doctrine is building a search engine for court decisions and other legal texts. This is a key tool if you’re a lawyer or you’re working in the legal industry in general. There are now a
Ticketmaster UK announced on its site yesterday that it identified malicious malware on June 23rd that had affected nearly five percent of their customers, allowing an unknown third-party access to customers’ names, email addresses, telephone numbers, payment details and login information between February 2017 and June 23rd, 2018. The company says the breach can be
Adtech company Criteo is investing $23 million (€20 million) in a new artificial intelligence lab in Paris. Over the next three years, the company plans to hire researchers to work on AI-related projects. Many of their projects will lead to public presentations, open-source releases and research papers. VP of Research Suju Rajan is going to
Startups are strange beasts. Founders and investors are obviously so super-focused on building their companies that sometimes they forget to delve into the big issues behind tech and startups. Plus, do they ever know what’s going on outside their laser-focused view? Sometimes it’s good to take stock. That’s why we’ve built The Europas Awards &
Facebook knows the historical app audit it’s conducting in the wake of the Cambridge Analytica data misuse scandal is going to result in a tsunami of skeletons tumbling out of its closet. It’s already suspended around 200 apps as a result of the audit — which remains ongoing, with no formal timeline announced for when
It’s been an unexpectedly slack day for digital comms services. It’s not just workplace IM tool Slack suffering outages but end-to-end encrypted email service ProtonMail too. In the latter case, the company has blamed several hours’ worth of sporadic outages on a major DDoS attack. Our network has been under sustained attack this morning. We
French startup Taster, formerly known as Mission Food, is building restaurants around big cities specifically for Deliveroo, UberEats and Glovo. These restaurants don’t have any tables, they’re all about serving food on online platforms. The startup just raised a $4 million funding round led by Sunstone Capital, with Global Founders Capital, Thierry Gillier and LocalGlobe
Pet services can be serious startup business. Witness the likes of dog walking startups Rover and Wag, for example. At the same time digital health is a major area of interest for entrepreneurs, thanks to reliable demand meeting tech’s disruptive potential. Well, Sweden’s FirstVet is dabbling in both — offering remote video consultations and advice
Highland Europe, the European “growth-stage” technology investor, has closed a new €463 million fund, the firm’s third fund in just six years. Targeting “globally ambitious” European software and internet-enabled businesses, the VC typically writes initial cheques of between €10 million and €30 million. It says that startups seeking investment need to demonstrate that they have
TourRadar, the online travel agency (OTA) that targets the multi-day touring market, continues to be on a roll. The Vienna, Austria-headquartered company, which also has offices in Brisbane and Toronto, has raised $50 million in Series C funding. Consisting mostly of primary funding, the round is led by the Silicon Valley growth VC firm TCV,
Uber is in court in the UK today to try to overturn a decision by London’s transport regulator last fall to withdraw its license to operate in the city — where it claims to have some 3.5 million regular users. Its appeal is being heard in Westminster Magistrates Court from today, with the hearing expected
“So what’s going on here then?” I ask. “Two good friends just got even better [friends],” replies TransferWise co-founder Kristo Käärmann laughing, while Monzo co-founder Tom Blomfield, who is also on the video call, smiles approvingly. “Sorry for spoiling your news,” I tell the pair, who I’m interviewing ahead of an announcement today that the
It’s been hard to miss the scooter startup wars opening fresh, techno-fueled rifts in Valley society in recent months. Another flavor of ride-sharing steed which sprouted seemingly overnight to clutter up sidewalks — drawing rapid-fire ire from city regulators apparently far more forgiving of traffic congestion if it’s delivered in the traditional, car-shaped capsule. Even