Disrupting beauty’s last frontier with Keta Burke-Williams from Ourside
TechCrunch » Direct To Consumer
by Rebecca Szkutak
1y ago
Welcome back to Found, where we get the stories behind the startups. This week Darrell and Becca are joined by Keta Burke-Williams, the founder and CEO of Ourside, a direct-to-consumer fragrance company. Keta talked about what got her interested in disrupting the behemoth — and outdated — fragrance industry and what it has been like to develop a product that each consumer will experience differently. She also talked about her personal connections to scent and what it was like to raise venture money as a Black woman. Bonus! We learn that Darrell might be a “frag head.” Subscribe to Found to he ..read more
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Haus, a VC-backed aperitif startup, is up for sale after Series A falls through
TechCrunch » Direct To Consumer
by Natasha Mascarenhas
1y ago
Haus launched in 2019 as an answer to a generation’s craving for a more transparent alcohol brand, raising millions in venture funding from angels such as Casey Neistat, Away co-founder Jen Rubio and funds including Homebrew, Haystack Ventures, Coatue, Shrug Capital and Worklife Ventures. Haus has raised $17 million on rolling SAFE notes to date. Today, CEO and co-founder Helena Price Hambrecht tapped into the same ethos of transparency to announce that the startup’s Series A fell through and the company is in the process of closing down. In an interview with TechCrunch, Hambrecht spoke about ..read more
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Is there hope for digital health startups post-Roe?
TechCrunch » Direct To Consumer
by Natasha Mascarenhas
2y ago
Hello and welcome back to Equity, a podcast about the business of startups, where we unpack the numbers and nuance behind the headlines. This is our Wednesday show, where we niche down to a single topic, think about a question and unpack the rest. This week, Natasha asked: How do digital health startups build in a post-Roe world? The question comes after Natasha’s recent Startups Weekly column, “When your startup’s core mission is set to be overturned.” The piece explores the ripple effects of the looming Roe v. Wade overturn, specifically in how it impacts startups. But let’s not h ..read more
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Kolkata Chai’s next cup includes a taste of venture funding
TechCrunch » Direct To Consumer
by Natasha Mascarenhas
2y ago
Co-founded by brothers Ani and Ayan Sanyal, Kolkata Chai wants to be “the place to get good chai” in the United States. It’s a big market. The Sanyal brothers estimate the national tea market represents a $12.7 billion business per year. To chase after it, the duo tells TechCrunch that Kolkata is about to embark on a new chapter of its business: after spending years bootstrapping with revenue from their agency business, Kolkata Chai is taking on external capital for the first time. The startup recently raised a $1 million pre-seed round from investors including Boba Guys founders Andrew Chau a ..read more
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Disco gets brands to boogie together on customer acquisition
TechCrunch » Direct To Consumer
by Christine Hall
2y ago
As more companies establish an e-commerce presence, the stakes have never been higher for brands to cut through the clutter to land new customers. Disco, formerly known as Co-op Commerce, doesn’t think the cost of acquiring costs should be so reliant on Big Tech platforms. Instead, Conner Sherline, founder and CEO, says that when independent brands come together across partnerships, data and merchandising, they have the buying power to produce results for everyone. Conner Sherline, founder and CEO of Disco. Image Credits: Disco The new name was actually one that Sherline had been thinking ab ..read more
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Heartcore Capital bets on Europe with a $200M fund for consumer tech startups
TechCrunch » Direct To Consumer
by Mike Butcher
2y ago
Heartcore Capital, one of the few VCs to focus on consumer technology, has raised a $200 million early-stage fund for those kinds of startups across Europe. Heartcore IV, the firm’s flagship investment vehicle, will be supported by Heartcore Progression Beta, a $50 million “opportunity fund” for follow-on rounds in consumer tech. The firm said both vehicles were oversubscribed. Investors in the funds include Hermann Haraldsson (Boozt), Andrew Stalbow (Seriously), Phillip Chambers and Kasper Hulthin (Peakon), Paul Crusius and Marco Vietor (Audibene), Morten Strunge (Podimo, Mofibo) and Max-Jose ..read more
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PideDirecto bags $5.25M; aims to be ‘Shopify with 30-minute deliveries’
TechCrunch » Direct To Consumer
by Christine Hall
2y ago
PideDirecto, a Mexico-based company, is developing a platform that enables local businesses in Latin America to sell directly to their consumers and deliver orders in less than 30 minutes. Hussein Fawzi and Ronni Samir launched the company with Anders Steiner and Antonio Nacoud in September 2020. Fawzi, Samir and Nacoud met and studied together in college in Sweden, which is where they met Steiner. After going their separate ways for a bit, they met up in Mexico and launched a corporate wellness program in 2018 that connected people with restaurants to order lunch or snacks. During the pandemi ..read more
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Casper cuts its CMO, CTO and COO amid further layoffs
TechCrunch » Direct To Consumer
by Natasha Mascarenhas
2y ago
Casper has laid off dozens of employees, including three C-Level executives: its chief marketing officer, chief technology officer and chief operating officer, sources say. The mattress company declined to comment. The round of layoffs, communicated to employees on Friday, largely impacted retail and operations teams, signaling that the business may be undergoing a broader restructuring. Laid-off employees were offered severance packages. Notably, the impacted executives were all fairly recent additions to the team. CTO Ben Clark has been with the company since July 2019, while former CMO Lisa ..read more
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Choices and constraints: How DTC companies decide which strategy to follow
TechCrunch » Direct To Consumer
by Walter Thompson
2y ago
Companies typically have to settle on strategies that align with their customers, employees, investors and regulators. The more they know about how the other side will decide, the clearer their own strategies become. If regulators always prefer choice for consumers, then it is easy for a platform to allow multiple payment choices: Shopify allows multiple payment options from its partners, Apple doesn’t. By regulatory intervention, it will have to now. Nash equilibrium and Netflix time Nash equilibrium is a fascinating, post-facto explanation for some of the interesting decisions you will often ..read more
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Upscribe, raising $4M, wants to drive subscription-first DTC brand growth
TechCrunch » Direct To Consumer
by Christine Hall
2y ago
Upscribe founder and CEO Dileepan Siva watched the retail industry make a massive shift to subscription e-commerce for physical products over the past decade, and decided to get in it himself in 2019. The Los Angeles-based company, developing subscription software for direct-to-consumer e-commerce merchants, is Siva’s fourth startup experience and first time as founder. He closed a $4 million seed round to go after two macro trends he is seeing: buying physical products, like consumer-packaged goods, on a recurring basis, and new industries offering subscriptions, like car and fashion companie ..read more
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