Author: Joanna Glasner

How tax changes may impact US startups Joanna GlasnerContributor Joanna Glasner is a reporter for Crunchbase. More posts by this contributor: Not a minimalist? Startups will gladly store, manage and deliver your items The state of the unicorn Although U.S. businesses may be poised for massive tax reductions, most tech startups have little immediate reason to celebrate. After all, the vast majority are unprofitable. So cutting the corporate income tax rate from 35 percent to 20 percent, as Congress has opted to do, has zero effect on their near-term finances. That said,…

Virtual reality gets its groove back Joanna GlasnerContributor Joanna Glasner is a reporter for Crunchbase. More posts by this contributor: Not a minimalist? Startups will gladly store, manage and deliver your items The state of the unicorn Technophiles tend to overestimate the pace of mass adoption. For example, virtual reality fans expected a lot more of us to be whiling away our days with goggles stuck to faces, immersed in virtual worlds. Instead, we’re still glued to our cell phones, as VR headset makers struggle to make headway. While consumers snapped up more…

Do VC woes extend to portfolio companies? For Rothenberg, probably not Joanna GlasnerContributor Joanna Glasner is a reporter for Crunchbase. More posts by this contributor: Not a minimalist? Startups will gladly store, manage and deliver your items The state of the unicorn As VC brands go, Rothenberg Ventures has seen better days. The firm built up a reputation as an up-and-coming early-stage investor a few years ago, based on bold bets on virtual reality, a flashy marketing strategy and its well-connected namesake and founder, Mike Rothenberg. Between 2012 and 2016, the San Francisco firm participated…

These are the US startups that Russian investors are backing Joanna GlasnerContributor Joanna Glasner is a reporter for Crunchbase. More posts by this contributor: Not a minimalist? Startups will gladly store, manage and deliver your items The state of the unicorn A taxi-hailing app. A transplant device developer. An online mortgage provider. Those businesses may have little in common, but one shared thread is that U.S. startups in these sectors have all secured large funding rounds led by Russia-based investors. They’re not alone. Over the past seven years, Russia-based strategic and venture…

Quantifying the driverless startup boom Joanna GlasnerContributor Joanna Glasner is a reporter for Crunchbase. More posts by this contributor: Not a minimalist? Startups will gladly store, manage and deliver your items The state of the unicorn For driverless car startups, raising capital seems to happen on autopilot. Investors and acquirers have put billions into the space over the past couple of years in the race for early mover advantage. They’ve shown no desire to hit the brakes lately either, as indicated by a spate of recent deals, including last week’s $450 million sale of…

New seed funds pursue AI, hard tech and the Midwest Joanna GlasnerContributor Joanna Glasner is a reporter for Crunchbase. More posts by this contributor: Not a minimalist? Startups will gladly store, manage and deliver your items The state of the unicorn Stories about seed funding often contain sappy metaphors about planting seedlings and nurturing them to maturity. In reality, it’s a brutally Darwinian business: most companies fail, successful ones get diluted and exits commonly take a decade or more. That said, seed also has the highest potential returns of any investment stage….

Q3 2017 US VC report: Exit options dwindle while late-stage dealmaking reaches new heights Joanna GlasnerContributor Joanna Glasner is a reporter for Crunchbase. More posts by this contributor: Not a minimalist? Startups will gladly store, manage and deliver your items The state of the unicorn U.S. startup investors were good at putting capital to work this past quarter. They weren’t as good at getting it back. Those are two standout trends for the venture investment landscape in the domestic third quarter of 2017, according to reported and projected data from Crunchbase. Data…

Automakers accelerate their interest in startups Joanna GlasnerContributor Joanna Glasner is a reporter for Crunchbase. More posts by this contributor: Not a minimalist? Startups will gladly store, manage and deliver your items The state of the unicorn When it comes to startup investment, carmakers are all over the road. Over the past two years, we’ve seen a massive spike in venture funding by major auto manufacturers. Deal counts are up, more automakers are investing and more big rounds are getting done. However, an analysis of Crunchbase funding data for the 20 largest global…

Is it exit season yet? Joanna GlasnerContributor Joanna Glasner is a reporter for Crunchbase. More posts by this contributor: Not a minimalist? Startups will gladly store, manage and deliver your items The state of the unicorn Startup funding and exiting activity has been slow over the past few months in the U.S. Fewer companies closed rounds, IPO volumes were light, and not a lot of big M&A deals got done. But that’s to be expected, right? After all, it was summer break. Now that Labor Day’s over and we’re back at our desks,…

Funding your bliss: mindfulness startups scale up Joanna GlasnerContributor Joanna Glasner is a reporter for Crunchbase. More posts by this contributor: Not a minimalist? Startups will gladly store, manage and deliver your items The state of the unicorn The connected life is not necessarily the good life. Too often, it seems like we are squandering our time checking devices, losing touch with fellow humans and cultivating bad habits in the pursuit of instant gratification. If only an app could fix that. Preferably, it’d be one we could use all day long and…