His house burned down. He used the insurance money to build PopSockets.

A startup hoping to provide a credible alternative to Amazon has picked up funding to double down on the gap in the market. PrettyDamnQuick (PDQ) provides tech to retailers to let them customize and test different shipping and checkout flows, and now it has picked up a deal of its own: a $25 million Series A to expand its business. With some 200 customers already on its books since it was founded in 2020, New York-based PDQ says it currently processes around 30 million orders each month. That

Jan 9, 2025

Three industry insiders walk through how startups can set up an employee equity strategy that remains fair as a company grows.

Nov 8, 2025

After more than two years — and nearly 100 episodes — as a host of TechCrunch’s recently ended Found podcast, I have learned a lot about how founders approach building their startups. I’ve heard stories about how founders know when it is the right time to expand from their core product, to how startups approach hiring, to what got entrepreneurs to take the leap in the first place, and everything in between. While not a founder myself, some of the learnings and advice I heard on the show stood o

Jan 12, 2025

Eight years ago, Brian Garrett and his partners sensed the ground shifting. At the time, Crosscut Ventures, where Garrett is co-founder and managing partner, had been investing in early stage startups in Los Angeles and Southern California for nearly a decade. It focused mostly on software companies, but it started shifting its attention to hardware, too, as promising founders gravitated toward it. “At that point, SpaceX was very established,” he told TechCrunch. “Mostly, people started to spi

Oct 29, 2024