GoKawiil
Tech News
Former LocalGlobe and Impact X investor Yvonne Bajela announced the close of an oversubscribed $17 million debut fund called Evertrue. The fund has already backed seven companies with an average check size of about £350,000, and plans to invest in at least 20 companies over the next three years, focusing on early-stage startups in the U.K. and Europe.
An eight-week startup camp run by the author's company drew more than 500 first-time founders from over 50 countries. Using AI tools, most participants had a working product within a couple of weeks, but only about one in ten converted that into an actual paying customer. Founders who succeeded reported that early sales came through personal networks and direct conversations rather than cold outreach or advertising.
TechCrunch Founder Summit, presented by Fidelity Private Shares, takes place November 4 at SoWa Power Station in Boston. Speakers include Toast co-founder Steve Fredette and HqO CEO Chase Garbarino, who will discuss building and scaling companies outside Silicon Valley. The event also marks the final day for discounted ticket pricing and group discounts before prices rise.
Venture firm Trucks VC says it has received pitches from 81 new AV startups so far in 2026, a two-thirds increase over last year and more than during the 2016-2017 dealmaking boom. Partner Puneeth Meruva told TechCrunch that some startups are now deploying within months while raising less than $1 million, aided by open-source foundation models like Nvidia's Alpamayo and Qwen's vision-language-action models.
OpenAI closed a new funding round that brought in less than half of its targeted $30 billion, according to reports. The round valued the ChatGPT maker at $1.25 trillion, below the $1.4 trillion figure it had been seeking.
At the annual DataTribe Challenge, a competition for early-stage cybersecurity startups, investors evaluated new entrants and discussed which types of security technology they would prioritize funding going forward. The event showcased emerging companies while giving venture investors a platform to share views on where the cybersecurity market is heading.
A commentary contends that many promising healthcare innovations developed at universities and medical centers never reach the market because their inventors—scientists, engineers, and clinicians—lack experience pitching to investors or building companies. It cites examples including an autism researcher's AI-based therapy game, a tumor microenvironment discovery, a miniaturized imaging magnet, and a pediatric cardiac care innovation created by an MBA-MD team.
TechCrunch will use Braindate at its Founder Summit on November 4 at SoWa Power Station in Boston, letting attendees schedule one-on-one or small-group meetings around specific topics rather than relying on chance encounters. The event also includes main-stage and roundtable discussions on scaling, hiring, fundraising and enterprise sales, and offers discounted passes including a free second ticket.
In an opinion piece for Entrepreneur, a former Fortune 500 executive and startup investor describes how skills he developed immigrating from Cyprus as a child—observation, resourcefulness, and adaptability—mirror habits needed for entrepreneurial success. He cites a Carnegie finding that immigrants founded or co-founded more than half of America's billion-dollar startups, and argues these habits can be adopted by anyone, not just immigrants.
A startup commentator argues that intensity, rather than intelligence or charisma, is the key cultural trait shared by the most successful startups. The piece draws on personal experience across three startups and cites quotes from figures like Warren Buffett, Paul Graham, Jason Lemkin and the Elon Musk biography to support the claim.
A startup backed by defense technology company Anduril is pursuing genetic engineering techniques to breed military working dogs with enhanced speed and smell. The goal is to produce animals better suited for battlefield tasks than currently available breeds.
An Entrepreneur contributor argues that incumbent software companies don't lose market share simply because AI-native startups use newer technology. Drawing on observations across three tech shifts—web to mobile, to cloud, and now to AI—the writer says the real determinant of success is whether a company stays close to evolving customer problems. The piece cites small-business accounting SaaS as an example of a cloud incumbent maintaining relevance through close customer tracking.