Author: Kate Clark

Fertility services are raising venture cash left and right. Last week, it was Dadi, a sperm storage startup that nabbed a $2 million seed round. This week, it’s Extend Fertility, which helps women preserve their fertility through egg freezing. Headquartered in New York, the business has secured a $15 million Series A investment from Regal Healthcare Capital Partners to expand its fertility services, which also include infertility treatments, such as in vitro and intrauterine insemination. The company has also appointed Anne Hogarty, the former chief business officer at Prelude Fertility and vice president of international business at BuzzFeed, to the...

To better measure aptitude of applicants, online job search engine Hired has acquired Py, which helps companies like Opendoor and Niantic identify talent with app-based interactive courses on Python, iOS development and more. As part of the deal, Hired will launch a new feature called Hired Assessments, leveraging tools from the Py platform, as well as a tiered subscription model. The base-level package, called Hired Essential, will provide enhanced search functionality, tools to help candidates arrive to interviews as prepared as possible and more. A spokesperson for Py declined to disclose terms of the deal but did say that...

Shortly after closing a $100 million pre-IPO round, food delivery business Postmates has confidentially filed documents with the Securities and Exchange Commission for an upcoming public offering, Bloomberg is reporting. We’ve reached out to Postmates for confirmation. The company will debut on the stock exchange at a more than $1.85 billion valuation — the valuation it garnered with its $100 million in January. In total, Postmates has raised $681 million in venture capital funding from investors including Spark Capital, Founders Fund, Uncork Capital and Slow Ventures. The 8-year-old company has tapped JPMorgan Chase and Bank of America to lead its upcoming float. Postmates, which...

Airbnb made it easier for travelers to find a place to crash. Now it wants to make it easier for them to get around. The $31 billion home-sharing giant has hired Fred Reid as its first-ever global head of transportation. Reid served as the founding chief executive officer of Virgin America from 2004 to 2007 after a three-year stint as the president of Delta Airlines. Most recently, Reid was president of the Cora Aircraft Program, a division of Kitty Hawk focused on the development of an autonomous electric vertical takeoff and landing aircraft. The hire suggests Airbnb has broad ambitions...

An investigation by Consumer Reports may force electric scooter businesses to double back on safety measures. The magazine found electric scooters caused 1,545 injuries in the U.S. since late 2017, according to data collected from 110 hospitals and five public agencies in 47 cities where Bird or Lime, the leading tech-enabled scooter-sharing platforms, operate. The news comes shortly after UCLA published a study finding that 249 people required medical care following scooter accidents, with one-third of that group arriving at the hospital in an ambulance. “These injuries can be severe,” Tarak Trivedi, an emergency physician at UCLA and the study’s lead author, told CNET....

Little Spoon, a startup producing modular packages of nutritional, direct-to-consumer baby food, has raised a $7 million round of funding lead by Vaultier7. The subscription-based service delivers meals — a fixed $3 apiece — to customers’ doorsteps. To date, Little Spoon said it has delivered 1 million meals. Other investors in the round include Kairos, Chobani’s executive vice president of sales Kyle O’Brien, Tinder founders Sean Rad and Justin Mateen, Interplay Ventures, the San Francisco 49ers and SoGal Ventures. Among the business’s co-founders are Michelle Muller, chief executive officer Ben Lewis, chief product officer Angela Vranich and chief marketing officer Lisa Barnett,...