TechCrunch Startup News

Ro, a two-year-old startup known for its online pharmacy of men’s health products, has named BuzzFeed’s Todd Levy its chief technology officer. Levy first joined BuzzFeed in 2014 as the digital media company’s vice president of engineering; he was named CTO in 2016. Prior to BuzzFeed, Levy co-founded and led link management tool bit.ly. Levy begins his new role Wednesday, August 14. We’ve reached out to BuzzFeed for comment. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Small satellite launch startup Vector has indefinitely shut down operations “in response a major change in financing,” the company confirmed. Co-founder and CEO Jim Cantrell has also been cut loose as part of the upset. The news comes as a surprise to the space startup community, and apparently to its employees. The company lined up $70 million in funding late last year, and recently was announced as a qualified contestant in DARPA’s Launch Challenge. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Considering its unparalleled success, it was only a matter of time before a Brex copycat emerged. Ramp Financial, a new startup led by Capital One-acquired Paribus founders Eric Glyman and Karim Atiyeh (pictured), has raised $7 million, TechCrunch has learned. The capital came from Keith Rabois of Founders Fund, BoxGroup’s Adam Rothenberg and Coatue Management, a hedge fund that recently launched a $700 million early-stage investment vehicle. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Gaming continues to grow in popularity, with esports revenue growing 23 percent from last year to top $1 billion in 2019. But the metrics by which talent is evaluated in gaming, and the methods by which gamers can train to better hone their craft, are varied and at times non-existent. That’s where StateSpace, and specifically the company’s gaming arm Klutch, come into play. In 2017, Statespace launched out of stealth with their first product, Aim Lab. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Cockroach Labs, makers of CockroachDB, sits in a tough position in the database market. On one side, it has traditional database vendors like Oracle, and on the other there’s AWS and its family of databases. It takes some good technology and serious dollars to compete with those companies. Cockroach took care of the latter with a $55 million Series C round today. The round was led by Altimeter Capital and Tiger Global along with existing investor GV. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

If enterprise software makes your entrepreneurial heart beat faster, you do not want to miss TC Sessions: Enterprise 2019 on September 5 in San Francisco. And if you really want to make your heart sing, buy an early-bird ticket and save $100. But act quickly, because that deal disappears in just 48 hours on August 9 at 11:59 p.m. (PT). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Shouting out to all the fierce female founders. Have you applied to participate in theAll Raise“ask me anything” (AMA) sessions atDisrupt SF 2019? No? Women, it’s time to act. Apply for an AMA session by the August 30 deadline and you could win a free Expo Only Pass. You heard that right. We have 30 free Expo Only passes, and we’ll give them away at random to women founders who get accepted to the All Raise program at Disrupt SF 2019. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

We’re still in the hunt for innovative early-stage hardware startup founders. And by that, we mean boundary-pushers, exceptional disrupters and all-around game-changers. If that sounds like you, you still have time to apply to compete in Hardware Battlefield at TC Shenzhenon November 11-12. Don’t miss your chance to compete in our epic, hardware-focused pitch competition. Apply to TC Hardware Battlefield 2019. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Cybereason, which uses machine learning to increase the number of endpoints a single analyst can manage across a network of distributed resources, has raised $200 million in new financing from SoftBank Group and its affiliates. It’s a sign of the belief that SoftBank has in the technology, since the Japanese investment firm is basically doubling down on commitments it made to the Boston-based company four years ago. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Monzo says it wasn’t storing ‘some’ customer PINs correctly, but has now fixed the bug Monzo, the fast-growing challenger U.K. challenger bank that recently soft-launched in the U.S., is disclosing a potential, albeit relatively limited, security oversight that saw customer PINs stored incorrectly within the company’s internal systems. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices