Author: pekandesigns

Mobile banking app Current, which began as a teen debit card controlled by parents, expanded to offer personal checking accounts earlier this year. Now the company says it has grown to host over 500,000 accounts on its service and has closed on $20 million in Series B funding to further its growth. The round included […]

Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic wil find out what the public markets think of its ambitious plan to make commercial space tourism a reality on Monday. The company’s shareholders have approved a merger announced earlier this year with Chamath Palihapitiya’s special Social Capital Hedosophia holding company, and that will take effect Friday, followed by a debut […]

If you thought storming into a highly secured government facility with your electronics but without permission was a smart idea, you’d be wrong. But that didn’t stop Rep. Matt Gaetz and close to three-dozen of his Republican colleagues on Wednesday from doing exactly that. Gaetz, a Republican congressman from Florida, proudly announced in his tweets: […]

Randori, a Boston-based start-up from a former Carbon Black executive and a former Red Team consultant, announced its first product today called Randori Recon, a service designed to act with a hacker’s mindset to surface all of your company’s external weaknesses. Brian Hazzard, co-founder and CEO, says he had worked with his co-founder David Wolpoff […]

It’s no secret that the art of customer service in the modern era is something that banks desperately need help with. One of the reasons why challenger banks have been able to find acceptance, new customers and — well — the ability to challenge existing banking companies is the mistreatment customers receive from their existing […]

HelloOffice, a new real estate brokerage business out of San Francisco, has nabbed $6.5 million in new financing and is absconding down to Los Angeles to open its first regional office. The company provides software to expedite the often painful (especially in San Francisco) task of finding office space (not the Mike Judge movie, which […]

Influencer marketing and the related area of sponcon have become a cornerstone of how the internet’s wheels spin: personalities attract traffic and buzz, and help shift not just sentiment but often products for brands, giving boosts both to online engagement and commerce. Now, a London startup called Verve, which plays on the influencer theme in […]

Grafana Labs, the commercial company built to support the open-source Grafana project, announced a healthy $24 million Series A investment today. Lightspeed Venture Partners led the round with participation from Lead Edge Capital. Company CEO and co-founder Raj Dutt says the startup started life as a way to offer a commercial layer on top of […]

Data security startup Very Good Security has raised $35 million in its latest round of funding. Its Series B, announced Thursday, was led by Goldman Sachs, with participation from existing investors Andreessen Horowitz — which led its $8.5 million Series A round — and Vertex Ventures US. Very Good Security’s offering is simple. Instead of […]