TechCrunch Startup News

Last month, Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) general partner Chris Dixon announced at TechCrunch Disrupt that the VC firm would run a free crypto startup school. And the company is officially launching its school today. Applications are now open and you have four weeks to apply. With this initiative, a16z wants to democratize cryptocurrencies. Dixon and the a16z has been involved in the cryptocurrency/blockchain space for 7 years, and the firm now wants to share some of its learnings with entrepreneurs. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

If the researchers, executives and investors behind Coda Biotherapeutics have their way, one day soon there really could be a cure for pain. Co-founded by researchers Joseph Glorioso, from the University of Pittsburgh’s microbiology and molecular genetics department; and Dr. Nicholas Boulis, the founder of Emory’s Gene and Cell Therapy for Neurorestoration Laboratory; Coda uses gene therapies to treat neurological diseases starting with severe pain and epilepsy. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Better than expected revenues couldn’t divert investor attention from the fact that Uber still managed to lose more than $1 billion in the most recent quarter as the company’s stock fell in after-hours trading. There are bright spots in the latest earnings report, not least that the company managed to stanch the bleeding that had cost the company over $5 billion in the previous quarter. Revenue grew to $3.8 billion, up from $2.9 billion in the year-ago period, representing a 30% boost. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Robotic Process Automation (RPA) has been a hot commodity in recent years as it helps automate tedious manual workflows inside large organizations. Robocorp, a San Francisco startup, wants to bring open source and RPA together. Today it announced a $5.6 million seed investment. Benchmark led the round with participation from Slow Ventures, firstminute Capital, Bret Taylor, president and chief product officer at Salesforce and Docker CEO Rob Bearden. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Wardrobe, a new peer-to-peer fashion rental marketplace, has today announced the close of a $1.5 million seed round and its public launch out of beta. The funding was led by angel investor Cyan Banister and Ludlow Ventures, with participation from GroupUp Ventures, Airbnb cofounder Nate Blecharczyk and HQ Trivia founder Rus Yusupov, among others. Wardrobe was founded by Adarsh Alphons after he had an epiphany about just how many items of clothes in his own house went mostly unused. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

What if you could pay now to store something online permanently? You could preserve a website against censorship, save legal contracts, or offer an app even after your company fails. That’s the promise of Arweave‘s Permaweb. The startup has built a new type of blockchain that relies on Moore’s Law-style declining data storage costs. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Gradeup, an edtech startup in India that operates an exam preparation platform for undergraduate and postgraduate level courses, has raised $7 million from Times Internet as it looks to expand its business in the country. Times Internet, a conglomerate in India, invested $7 million in Series A and $3 million in Seed financing rounds of the four-year-old Noida-based startup, it said. Times Internet is the only external investor in Gradeup, they said. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

There’s too much hype about mythical “10X developers”. Everyone’s desperate to hire these ‘ninja rockstars’. In reality, it’s smarter to find ways of deleting annoying chores for the coders you already have. That’s where CTO.ai comes in. Emerging from stealth today, CTO.ai lets developers build and borrow DevOps shortcuts. These automate long series of steps they usually have to do manually thanks to integrations with GitHub, AWS, Slack, and more. CTO. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Welcome back to Max Q, our weekly look at what’s happening in space and space startup news. This week was a bit more quiet than usual coming off of the amazingly over-packed International Astronautical Congress, but there were still some big moves that promise a lot more action to come before they year’s over – particularly in the race to fly American astronauts to space on a rocket launched from American soil once again. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Addresses are ambiguous, not precise enough or don’t even exist in some places. what3words wants to map the entire world and overhaul addresses three words at a time. That’s why I’m excited to announce that what3words Chief Commercial Officer Clare Jones is joining us at TechCrunch Disrupt Berlin. The startup has divided the world in 3 meter squares. Each square has been assigned three words. This way, it’s easy to read, easy to write and even easy to say. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices