Today's interview was led by TechCrunch Senior Enterprise Reporter, Kyle Wiggers. Kyle spoke with Romi Gubes, the CEO of Sensi.AI, a startup that has developed 24/7 audio-based AI software to detect and predict physical, cognitive and emotional care-related anomalies. Joining Romi is Sergey Gribov, General partner at Flint Capital and a board member at Sensi.AI, who previously founded the enterprise assets management company AB Systems. Romi and Sergey spoke to us about: Providing an assisted solution for caregivers during the continued healthcare worker shortage When to develop your own AI, and when to use an off-the-shelf solution We closed out the show with a new batch of founders for Pitch Practice. And as always, if you want to check out the full video of today's conversation, head to our YouTube channel and stay tuned for more TechCrunch Live! The TechCrunch Live Podcast drops at 6:00 a.m. PT every Monday, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast,Spotify and all the casts.

This week on the TechCrunch Live podcast, we hear from Mark Rostick from Intel Capital to Garima Kapoor from MinIO. It might not be the buzziest areas to grow a company, yet MinIO found a niche selling object storage, while competing directly with Amazon S3. Perhaps the open source component helps drive interest from its target developer market looking for an alternative from the cloud giant. It’s never easy competing with the likes of Amazon, yet MinIO has been able to find success. Garima Kapoor co-founded MinIO in 2014 and has since grown the company to a billion-dollar valuation. Along the way, Kapoor raised $126.30 million from venture capital, including from Mark Rostick of Intel Capital. We have a lot of questions about MinIO: Why did it get into a business competing directly with Amazon? What role did open source have in building a developer audience? How did cloud-native technologies contribute to your success? What did Mark and Intel Capital see in this company that made them think they could succeed in a crowded and mature market? And you can ask questions too! Each week on TechCrunch Live, registered Hopin attendees can submit questions, and I’ll do my best to ask as many as possible. TechCrunch Live is our weekly event series featuring top founders and investors. The show records live, most Wednesdays at 12:00 p.m. PDT. It’s free to register and attend. Watch past episodes on our YouTube channel and subscribe to the podcast here.

Today's interview was led by TechCrunch Global Managing Editor, Ingrid Lunden. Ingrid spoke to Rick Song, one of the co-founders of Persona, which built and offers a large suite of identity verification solutions to address the ever-growing issue of identity fraud. Joining Rick is Mark Goldberg of Index Ventures, a firm that made a prescient move to spot and back Persona early on. Mark and Rick spoke to us about: How Persona keeps pace with AI Verification and Online Trust How Index Ventures is riding on the wave of the startup’s growth And the unique and complex issues that come to the public’s mind with AI Matt Burns closed out the show with audience questions and a new batch of founders for Pitch Practice. And as always, if you want to check out the full video of today's conversation, head to our YouTube channel and stay tuned for more TechCrunch Live! The TechCrunch Live Podcast drops at 6:00 a.m. PT every Monday, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast,Spotify and all the casts.

Matt Burns spoke to James Peyer, the co-founder of Cambrian BioPharma, and Maryanna Saenko, co-founder and partner at Future Ventures. Cambrian BioPharma is a new pharmaceutical startup with a revolutionary approach to developing and managing drug development age-related diseases. What we're most interested in, though, is how Cambrian’s executive team attracts and retains top talent. (Spoiler: They give them an oversized amount of equity compared to traditional pharmaceutical companies.) James and Maryanna spoke to us about: Developing therapeutics for anti-aging in a way that works with the existing regulatory structure How James and Maryanna solve the 'venture capital math problem' But first we spoke on moving research from academia to the real world and fighting misconception and buzzwords around longevity biotech We closed out the show with a new batch of founders for Pitch Practice. And as always, if you want to check out the full video of today's conversation, head to our YouTube channel and stay tuned for more TechCrunch Live! The TechCrunch Live Podcast drops at 6:00 a.m. PT every Monday, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast,Spotify and all the casts.

Today's interview was led by TechCrunch Senior Reporter and edtech expert, Natasha Mascarenhas. Natasha spoke to Sam Chaudhary, the founder of ClassDojo, who spent eight years building the edtech consumer app that focuses on student classrooms, before introducing a formal revenue model. Joining Sam is his investor Chris Farmer, the founder and CEO of SignalFire, a seed-stage venture firm that recently raised $900 million across four new funds. Sam and Chris spoke to us about: How Sam played the long-game in edtech and what he’d do differently if he had to do it all over again Why SignalFire chose to navigate the edtech space, specifically the connection between kids and consumers How Chris sees investing in companies that aren’t rushing to monetize The "outsider advantage" and its tension with insider knowledge We closed out the show with a new batch of founders for Pitch Practice. And as always, if you want to check out the full video of today's conversation, head to our YouTube channel and stay tuned for more TechCrunch Live! The TechCrunch Live Podcast drops at 6:00 a.m. PT every Monday, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast,Spotify and all the casts.

Matt Burns spoke to Brynne McNulty Rojas, who's the co-founder and CEO of Habi, the hot real estate startup out of Colombia which reached unicorn status last year. Brynne founded Habi to bring modern home buying tools to low- and middle-class home buyers in her home country of Colombia. Now, with a valuation above $1 billion USD, Habi is a serious player in the LatAm home buying market where the majority of the homes for sale are not listed online. Joining Brynne in this conversation is Mark Batsiyan, a co-founder and partner at Inspired Capital. Brynne and Mark spoke to us about: Habi's growth and what it was like to work with US-based investors How Brynne built her team's confidence during a period of uncertainty The value of transparency and sharing vulnerability And advice to founders raising in today's market We closed out the show with a new batch of founders for Pitch Practice. And as always, if you want to check out the full video of today's conversation, head to our YouTube channel and stay tuned for more TechCrunch Live! The TechCrunch Live Podcast drops at 6:00 a.m. PT every Monday, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast,Spotify and all the casts.

Today's interview was led by Neesha Tambe, TechCrunch’s Startup Battlefield editor who’s also largely responsible for the hundreds of startups pitching and exhibiting at TechCrunch Disrupt. But she’s here today because of her personal experience with I-V-F. Neesha spoke with Oma Robotics o-founder Kiran Joshi and Root Ventures Partner Chrissy Meyer. Unlike many other fertility providers, Oma focuses on male infertility, and today we’re going to hear about a few things: Oma Fertility's experience building a company in healthcare during a global pandemic How Root made the jump to virtual-first investments, which is now the new norm And how founders can craft their story and stand out in a crowded market As always, Matt Burns closed out the show with a round of Pitch Practice and audience questions. If you want to check out the full video of today's conversation, head to our YouTube channel and stay tuned for more TechCrunch Live! The TechCrunch Live Podcast drops at 6:00 a.m. PT every Monday, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast,Spotify and all the casts.

TechCrunch's Rebecca Bellan led today's interview, and she spoke with Contrary Capital founder and partner, Eric Tarczynski, and AtoB co-founder Harshita Arora. AtoB’s integrated financial platform is like Stripe for transportation, according to Harshita, but that's only part of what makes this startup interesting - Harshita herself is 21. She started this journey when she was 14 and wrote a best selling app when she was 16. She has a great story to tell. On this episode you’ll hear: Red flags VCs are keeping an eye out for when looking at teams How the VC and startup world reacts to the Girl Genius versus the Boy Genius. The pain points of the trucking industry, and why a fintech product aims to solve them. As always, Matt Burns closed out the show with a round of Pitch Practice and audience questions. If you want to check out the full video of today's conversation, head to our YouTube channel and stay tuned for more TechCrunch Live! The TechCrunch Live Podcast drops at 6:00 a.m. PT every Monday, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast,Spotify and all the casts.

This week, TechCrunch’s top security editor Zack Whittaker interviewed Sequoia partner Andrew Reed and Christina Cacioppo, co-founder and CEO of Vanta. Cacioppo started Vanta in 2016 has taken on the important work of compliance and security automation, closing its Series B in October 2022. On today's episode, we talked about: Why startups should focus on compliance early The value of making SOC 2 easy and low-cost for comapnies And what VCs are looking for in a company focusing on compliance As always, Matt Burns closed out the show with questions from the audience and a round of Pitch Practice. Don't forget - you can watch the full interview on our YouTube channel and stay tuned for more TechCrunch Live! The TechCrunch Live Podcast drops at 6:00 a.m. PT every Monday, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast,Spotify and all the casts.

This week, TechCrunch+ Editor In Chief, Alex Wilhelm, led the interview portion of our show. Alex spoke to Kleiner Perkins partner Mamoon Hamid and Founder & CEO of Thrive Global and co-founder of Huffington Post, Ariana Huffington. Huffington reckons that her company can help modern workers become healthier and more productive, partly through better habits — including sleep. And Mamoon thinks that the business she’s built around the idea has a big future. On today's episode, we talked about: Mamoon and Ariana's initial thoughts on where to go following Silicon Valley Bank's crash Thrive's growth and navigation of macro headwinds Employee well-being, burnout, and how to provide mental health support As always, Matt Burns closed out the show with questions from the audience and a round of Pitch Practice. Don't forget - you can watch the full interview on our YouTube channel and stay tuned for more TechCrunch Live! The TechCrunch Live Podcast drops at 6:00 a.m. PT every Monday, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast,Spotify and all the casts.

This week, Matt Burns spoke to Trulioo co-founder, Tanis Jorge, and David Blumberg of Blumberg Capital. Tanis and her co-founder, Stephen Ufford, began their journey with Trulioo back in 2011, and today, she runs The Cofounder’s Hub, a service dedicated to helping founders identify their needs and find a co-founder who works best in that situation. David was one of Trulioo’s first investors and put money in at every round. On today's episode, we talked about: Finding a co-founder (if you weren't lucky enough to meet them in high school) Building partnerships and putting "the founder ego" aside Navigating the equity split We closed out the show with questions from the audience and a round of Pitch Practice. As always, you can watch the full interview on our YouTube channel. The TechCrunch Live Podcast drops at 6:00 a.m. PT every Monday, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast,Spotify and all the casts.

Matt Burns spoke with CEO and co-founder of Tonkean, Sagi Eliyahu, and Foundation Capital partner, Joanne Chen. Tonkean started in 2015 as a no-code development platform, and added Joanne to its board of directors when it raised its seed round in 2019. We talked to the duo about: the best ways for founders to work with their board of directors Why you can't have compliance without adoption Addressing blind spots in leadership what you should look for when structuring a pitch deck Be sure to stay through to the end for audience questions and our favorite segment: pitch practice. As always, you can watch the full interview on our YouTube channel, and we'll talk to you next week.

This week, Matt Burns spoke to CFO turned CEO Christina Ross and her Mayfield partner Rajeev Batra. Christina's story is great - Prior to founding Cube, she ran finance at corporations and high-growth startups. On today's episode, we talked all about the shifting role of a CFO, how Cube caught Mayfield's eye, how startups can acquire customers from the beginning, and why you should consider buying your kid a cash register. As always, we ended the show with Pitch Practice: 3 entrepreneurs got to pitch their business to Christina and Rajeev in return for their feedback and advice. You can watch the full interview, including slides from Cube's pitch deck, on our YouTube channel. The TechCrunch Live Podcast drops at 6:00 a.m. PT every Monday, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast,Spotify and all the casts. Where did Cube come from, and where is it today? Hear Christina's journey from multiple CFO roles to becoming a CEO, and why she left those business to start her own. On Cube's top competitors including normal spreadsheets Why everyone speaks spreadsheets When did Mayfield invest, and what was your first meeting like? Butra spent several months getting to know Ross before investing in Cube. Mayfield investment process involves investing in the entrepreneur. Aligning on Cube's vision, mission, and purpose. How did Cube pitch its product in its 2022 fundraise? On the shifting demands of a modern CFO including why it requires more strategic thinking "Garbage in, garbage out." Why most companies still fall back on spreadsheets despite paying for external FP&A tools What did Mayfield find most intriguing about the product, and see its place in the vertical? Why Mayfield invested in Christina Ross, the founder, rather than investing in Cube, the company. Why Christina's family hates to play Clue with her. From CFO to CEO CFOs already make unpopular decisions, becoming a CEO According to Butra, Ross has made an impressive journey from CFO to CEO

TCL Podcast: Hear how to Cambly found profitability before its Series A Cambly was founded in 2012, and has since raised $80.29m from leading venture capital firms. Success didn’t come overnight. The company had to weather a failed fundraise and countless competitors on its way to becoming a market leader. I had Cambly CEO Sameer Shariff and Benchmark partner Sarah Tavel on TechCrunch Live. It was the first event of the 2023, and the timing is great. Part of Cambly’s story involves tweaking its business model to become cashflow positive much earlier than initially planned. And after the company started making money, it was able to close its Series A and a Series B. Hear this conversation in the TechCrunch Live podcast, or you can watch the video recap. Both are embedded below. TechCrunch Live records weekly, each Wednesday, at noon Pacific. It’s free to attend. Register for the next event right here. It will feature Christina Ross of Cube and Rajeev Batra of Mayfield. Outline Why Cambly failed to raise a Series A, and how the company changed to keep it afloat. Where was Cambly at in 2016, and what was the company’s runway and trajectory? What was the size of the total addressable market targeted by Cambly? After failing to close a Series A, how long did it take the company leaders to change direction? What moves did Cambly make to turn the company profitable? How to keep an investor engaged after they say no. What do investors expect after a pitch fails? How often should a founder email investors company updates? When is the right time for a company to fundraise? What metrics are important in a Series A raise? Don’t fundraise when the company needs money, but rather fundraise when the company can tell a compelling story. How do investors value a company that’s cash flow positive? On the struggles of building a marketplace. How to fight incumbent competitors. How to structure the company’s gross merchandise volume (GMV). How to avoid getting stuck in a very small market. Assets mentioned in the episode The Hierarchy of Marketplaces — Introduction and Level 1 , by Sarah Tavel

The TechCrunch Live Podcast is back for season 2 on February 6! Matt Burns sits down with experienced entrepreneurs and investors -- including market leaders from Benchmark, Sequoia, Index and Kleiner Perkins -- to help founders build better venture-backed businesses. First up, we're talking to: Benchmark's Sarah Tavel and Cambly's Sameer Shariff. Register here to join us live! Cube's Christina Ross and Mayfield's Rajeev Batra. Register here to join us live! The TechCrunch Live Podcast airs Mondays at 12 PT, wherever you get your podcasts. Want to join us live? TechCrunch Live streams on YouTube, Facebook, and Hopin Wednesdays at 12 PT. Visit TechCrunch.com for registration and more!

If you listen to Ursheet Parikh, partner at Mayfield, Trevor Martin has a unique trait: He's always the best listener in the room. And as the leader of a leading CRISPR startup, it's a critical ability. Mammoth Biosciences employs leading bioengineers including Jennifer Doudna, the Noble prize winning scientist who co-developed CRISPR. Doudna co-founded Mammoth Biosciences with Martin, Lucas Harrington, and Janice Chan. In this TechCrunch Live event you'll hear how Martin attracted the best partners to form Mammoth Biosciences including Parikh, who wrote an early funding check. Step one? It starts with the vision and mission, and don't forget to listen.

So you've made an API. It connects one thing to another, and it works well. How do you turn that into a business? On this week's TechCrunch Live, I host the perfect pairing of guests to talk about this. Stephany Kirkpatrick co-founded and runs Orum and has raised $82m for the company, which sells the Momentum API Orum calls it "A simple, smart payments API." It enables customers and businesses access to real-time payment rails without requiring a bank integration. This is a hugely impressive feat – but we're not here to talk about the API itself but how you get investors to fund an API. With Stephanie, we have Matt Sueoka from AMEX Ventures – the VC arm of American Express. They participated in Orum's Series A. And I think this makes for an interesting setup. AMEX Ventures is a corporate venture capital firm, and they tend to have different goals and operational input than a traditional VC fund. And because of that, you, as a startup founder, should have different approaches and expectations. We'll talk about it. But first, let's talk about TechCrunch Disrupt. The show is coming up in October, and tickets are still available. It's live and in person in San Francisco's Moscone Center. We have five stages of content with huge newsmakers on the Disrupt stage, more content like TechCrunch Live on the TC + stage, breakouts sessions, Q&A events, and Startup Battlefield, which is huge this year. Anyway, I hope you can make it. If anything, come to the event and watch me mess up live and in person. I'm hosting Startup Battlefield, which means there are so many names I'll going to miss pronounce.

TechCrunch Live took a virtual trip to Minneapolis, Minnesota for this week's event. And it was a great trip! This event is extra long, and includes conversations with some of the best founders and investors from the region. Following the panels and interviews, three Minneapolis startups competed for free tickets to TechCrunch Disrupt. I love the first panel. It's a conversation with Andrew Leone, CEO and Founder of Dispatch, a last mile delivery platform that started with a couple guys and some box trucks. Since then the company shifted to a SaaS model and is now in 60 markets throughout the United States. You'll hear from Andrew and investor Anna Mason, Managing Partner at the Rise of the Rest fund, on how the company made the significant transition and continues to reinvent itself. The next two conversations involve other local startups and investors from the Minneapolis region. The final panel was hosted by TechCrunch's Haje Kamps where he speaks with Mary Grove, managing partner of Bread & Butter Ventures, and Justin Kaufenberg, managing director of Rally Ventures, about their investment strategies. Both are based in Minneapolis, and they are using the city as a lookout tower for what's happening across the US. Those not familiar with the Minneapolis ecosystem might scratch their heads, and wonder why not be based in the more traditional epicenters of investing -- Bay Area, New York, or Boston. It may have been true in the past that that's where the bulk of the opportunities are, but in our interview, Grove and Kaufenberg explain that a lot has changed in the last 10-15 years. Finally, TechCrunch's Anita Ramaswamy spoke with Atif Siddiqi a Southern California transplant who first relocated to the Twin Cities to participate in the Target Techstars accelerator program. He hasn’t looked back since. Siddiqi has spent the past seven years building up Branch from its roots as a Midwestern upstart focused on earned wage access into a formidable Series C-stage business with $75 million in funding from investors such as Addition and General Atlantic and clients including Uber and Walmart. Siddiqi and early Branch investor Ryan Broshar of Minneapolis-based Matchstick ventures explain how the city’s venture ecosystem has evolved over the years and share their tips for founders outside coastal tech hubs looking to raise capital, bring in customers and make an impact on their industries far beyond their immediate locales.

This TechCrunch Live is all about raising a Series A. Jenny Lefcourt from Freestyle Partners and Guillaume de Zwirek CEO and co-founder of WELL Health talk on the specific steps founders should follow. We start the event talking about fundraising WELL Health’s seed round, and hear the lessons Guillaume de Zwirek learned along the way. As you’ll hear from Lefourt and de Zwirek, there are notable differences between raising a seed round and a Series A round. Investors look at different aspects of the company, and the founder must prepare for the fundraising differently. Rather than selling a story, they’re selling a company. This is a serious topic for Jenny Lefcourt. To help even more founders, she’s prepared an extensive blog post to go along with her TechCrunch Live appearance that goes even deeper into raising a Series A. Read that post here: https://techcrunch.com/2022/08/31/how-to-fundraise-a-series-a/

Benchling's success didn't come overnight. Some ten years after its founding, the company is worth more than $6 billion, and the founder sees the company going public in the future. The company's future looks like its past: talking to customers and building for power users. Benchling's CEO and co-founder, Sajith Wickramasekara, recently spoke at a TechCrunch Live event along with one of its early investors, Miles Grimshaw, general partner at Benchmark. Together, the two explained Benchling's early strategy that tapped a small entry market, which eventually led to widespread adoption. As Wickramasekara explained, early funding was hard to secure. It was 2012, and Benchling sat alone between SaaS companies and biotech. "Every software investor thought what we were doing was small and unimportant," Wickramasekara said, adding later, "and then we went to science investors, and every science investor understood the challenges of R&D, but they didn't understand software; they invested in drugs." TechCrunch Live records weekly on Wednesdays at 11:30 a.m. PDT/2:30 p.m. EDT. Join us!