Author: TechBrunch
While iconic founders like Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, and Mark Zuckerberg famously didn't graduate from college, studies have shown that the vast majority of successful startups have founders with bachelor's or graduate degrees. Despite this data, venture capitalists' enthusiasm for “no-degrees” is far from constant, but the appeal of dropout founders continues. It's a phenomenon that comes and goes, and we're certainly having a moment right now in the midst of the AI boom. This trend is especially evident during Y Combinator Demo Day, where founders increasingly advertise their dropout status in one-minute pitches. “While we do not believe YC…
This week on StrictlyVC Download, we share conversations from an event in Palo Alto. There, TechCrunch reporter Marina Temkin spoke with Mina Fahmi, founder and CEO of Sandbar, and Toni Schneider of True Ventures. Mina Fahmi is the CEO and co-founder of Sandbar. Sandbar is a startup building the Stream Ring, an AI wearable designed to capture whispered thoughts. Toni Schneider is a partner at True Ventures, which has backed Fitbit, Peloton, and Ring, and was initially skeptical of AI wearables until she saw the Sandbar demo. And to be clear, Schneider says he's seen a lot of demos. In…
Universities and research institutes have long been the repositories of deep technology in Europe. Academic spinouts are now being consolidated into robust startup funnels worth $398 billion, and VC funding is following suit. According to Dealroom's European Spinout Report 2025, 76 of these deep tech and life sciences companies have reached valuations of $1 billion, revenues of $100 million, or both. These include unicorns such as Iceeye, IQM, Isar Aerospace, Synthesia and Tekever, which are now increasing their funding to support university spin-outs. Just this month, two new funds were launched to provide more funding for talent coming out of…
This was supposed to be the year that climate tech died. President Donald Trump and the Republican Party have done their best to dismantle the Biden administration’s hallmark industrial and climate policies. Even the European Union has begun to ease off its most aggressive goals. And yet, as the year closes, the receipts provide a different view of climate and clean energy investing in the U.S. and Europe. Instead of tanking, venture bets in the sector remained essentially flat relative to 2024, according to CTVC, far from the slide some had expected. That resiliency is due in part to continued…
At TechCrunch Disrupt, three investors took to the stage to analyze what constitutes a pitch deck and what goes into it. Jyoti Bansal, founder turned investor. Defy's Medha Agarwal. and Jennifer Neundorfer of January Ventures shared their candid thoughts with the audience about what works and what doesn't in pitch decks. What is their biggest complaint? Too many buzzwords. Agarwal said the more a founder says about AI in their pitch, the less likely the company will use it. “People who are doing really innovative things talk about it and it's built in, but it's not the core of their…
It’s been three years since OpenAI released ChatGPT and kicked off a surge in innovation and attention on AI. Since then, optimists have regularly claimed that AI will become a critical part of the enterprise software industry, and so enterprise AI startups mushroomed on the back of immense amounts of investment. But enterprises are still struggling to see the benefit of adopting these new AI tools. An MIT survey in August found that 95% of enterprises weren’t getting a meaningful return on their investments in AI. So when will businesses start seeing real benefits from using and integrating AI? TechCrunch…
It was an ordinary day when Jay Gibson received an unexpected notification on his iPhone. “Apple has detected a targeted spyware attack on your iPhone,” the message read. Ironically, Mr. Gibson once worked for a company that developed the very type of spyware that could trigger such notifications. Still, he was shocked to receive the notification on his phone. He called his father, turned off his cell phone, and went to buy a new cell phone. “I was panicking,” he told TechCrunch. “It was a mess. It was a huge mess.” Gibson is just one of a growing number of…
When Kevin Hertz's security system failed to alert him late one night when an intruder rang his doorbell and tried to enter his San Francisco home, serial entrepreneur Kevin Hertz decided existing solutions weren't enough. His co-founder, Jack Abraham, experienced a similar setback at his home in Miami Beach. In 2024, they launched Sauron, named after the evil, all-seeing eye from “The Lord of the Rings,” to build what they envisioned as a military-grade home security system for the technological elite. The concept resonated in Bay Area neighborhoods, where crime has been a constant topic of conversation during and after…
India's startup ecosystem raised nearly $11 billion in 2025, but investors are writing far fewer checks and becoming more selective about where they take risks, highlighting how the world's third-rich startup market is moving away from the AI-powered capital concentration seen in the United States. The selective approach was most evident in trading. According to Tracxn, the number of startup funding rounds totaled 1,518, down nearly 39% year over year. Total funding declined even more modestly, falling more than 17% to $10.5 billion. That pullback was uneven. Seed-stage funding plummeted to $1.1 billion in 2025, a 30% decline from 2024,…
What does it take to raise a Series A in today’s market? As the AI boom reshapes industries, the goalposts are moving, the stakes are higher, and investors seem more picky than ever. At TechCrunch Disrupt, three investors – Thomas Green of Insight Partners, Katie Stanton of Moxxie Ventures, and Sangeen Zeb of GV – analyzed what they're looking for in the new year. The numbers tell a clear story. While the number of rounds of funding is decreasing, the size of deals is increasing, Green said, citing research. “It's never been easier to start a company, and it's never…