BardTech

The post Countingup, the business bank account that combines bookkeeping, raises £2.3M seed appeared first on BardTech . Countingup , the U.K. fintech that provides a business bank account that combines bookkeeping, has raised £2.3 million in seed funding. Leading the round is Forward Partners, with participation from previous backer Frontline Ventures, and JamJar Investments. Founded last year by Tim Fouracre, who previously founded cloud accounting software Clear Books, Countingup wants to simplify the life of sole traders and other small businesses by reinventing the business current account. Fouracre’s vision is that for small enterprises, business banking and accounting software should be merged so that bookkeeping and filing accounts can be a lot more automated. “If you are running a business then bookkeeping is a chore, wastes your time and is boring,” the Countingup up founder told me last year . “Your bank surprises you with hidden fees and you’ve probably lost faith in...

The post Mynewsdesk acquires web monitoring service Mention appeared first on BardTech . Communications workflow company Mynewsdesk is acquiring French startup Mention for an undisclosed sum. Norwegian business media group NHST currently owns Mynewsdesk. Mention lets you monitor keywords around the web. It’s a good way to hear what customers are saying about your brand on their blog, on Twitter, on Facebook or anywhere that is public. You can also use Mention to generate reports, study competitors to see if people are talking about them and find influencers who use your products. It can be a useful tool for PR and marketing companies for instance. Mynewsdesk wants to be an all-in-one tool for PR agencies. It can also help you track media coverage, but it goes a bit further than that. You can organize your media contacts in the service and segment your distribution list, write and distribute press releases and measure your campaigns. It’s clear that Mention fits well with Myne...

The post SurveyMonkey files for NASDAQ IPO appeared first on BardTech . SurveyMonkey , which helps businesses gather feedback through its survey platform, has submitted paperwork to the SEC for its upcoming NASDAQ public offering. The company plans to raise $100 million in the IPO, per the filing, though that’s likely a placeholder amount. The company, which will list under the symbol SVMK, has yet to price its shares. Most recently, SurveyMonkey brought in $250 million from Tiger Global, ICONIQ Capital and Social+Capital Partnership. The financing valued the company at $2 billion. SurveyMonkey didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. At the ripe age of 19, San Mateo, Calif.-based SurveyMonkey has been prepping an IPO for years now, finally filing confidentially with the SEC via the JOBS Act, which lets companies test the waters before they formally release an S-1, in mid-June. Despite its age, the company still isn’t profitable. SurveyMonkey reported a net lo...

The post DuckDuckGo gets $10M from Omers for global privacy push appeared first on BardTech . Pro-privacy search engine DuckDuckGo , which offers an alternative to surveillance engines like Google, has quietly picked up $10M in fresh funding from Canadian pension fund Omers’ VC arm. The  Globe and Mail  reported the news earlier this month. It’s only the second funding round for the ten year old company — which last picked up $3M in VC all the way back in 2011, according to Crunchbase . In a blog post  announcing the investment, Omers Ventures argues that privacy and security concerns have “risen to the forefront of public consciousness” over the past five years — noting how governments are responding to public demand and data breaches and “starting to take real action”, citing the European Union’s updated privacy framework, GDPR , as one example. With that conviction in mind, the fund actively pursued an investment in DDG, which has been profitable (via n...

The post SmartBear expands software testing market reach with Zephyr acquisition appeared first on BardTech . When a couple of long-established players are competing hard in any given market, one easy way to expand that market is to simply combine forces. That’s what SmartBear Software did today when it bought Zephyr , a fellow software testing firm with deep reach into the Atlassian Marketplace. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. Zephyr gives SmartBear a tool that includes Zephyr for Jira. Jira is the popular issue tracking software from Atlassian favored by many developers. In fact, Zephyr is the top grossing app in the Atlassian Marketplace, boasting over 18,000 teams using the tool to execute over 40 million tests, according to information supplied by the company. That kind of reach appealed to SmartBear CEO Justin Teague. The company claims the combined organizations will give them one of the most complete software testing product portfolios in the market. “The acquisit...

The post Planday raises €35M Series C for its shift-based work collaboration platform appeared first on BardTech . Planday , the workforce collaboration platform for shift workers, has raised €35 million in new funding. The Series C round is led by SEB Private Equity, with participation from previous backers , including Creandum and Idinvest. The Danish startup plans to use the additional investment to further develop the cloud-based software and to expand into new markets across Europe and North America. This will also include establishing a U.K.-based technology development hub — which represents a major market for Planday — as well as to grow sales and customer support teams in its London office. Founded in 2013, Planday has developed a flexible rota scheduling platform that is used by businesses to help manage shift workers. The cloud software enables “real-time, contextual communication” between employees, managers and co-workers in shift-based industries that have been tra...

The post Berkshire Hathaway reportedly agrees to buy stake in One97, owner of Paytm appeared first on BardTech . Berkshire Hathaway has reportedly agreed to buy a stake in One97, the owner of India’s largest digital payments service Paytm . This would mark the first time the investment firm has invested in an Indian startup. According to Indian financial news site Mint, which first broke the news , Berkshire Hathaway, the investment firm headed by Warren Buffett, is set to buy shares worth about $300 million to $350 million, at a valuation of about $10 billion to $12 billion. Another report in Bloomberg says Berkshire Hathaway will acquire a 3% to 4% stake in One97. Paytm’s investors already include SoftBank, which led a $450 million round in Paytm earlier this year , and Alibaba. Already India’s largest digital wallet and payment service with 230 million registered users, Paytm has recently focused on adding a host of new mobile services that could potentially turn it into a...

The post Travelstop brings business travel management to SMEs and startups in Southeast Asia appeared first on BardTech . Travelstop is a new startup in Singapore that aims to bring the benefits of business travel management to SMEs and other smaller companies in Southeast Asia. The company launched its product today after being founded in November 2017 by three entrepreneurs who worked at TravelMob, the Singapore startup bought by HomeAway in 2013 . Prior to TravelMob, the trio — Prashant Kirtane (CEO), Vijay Aggarwal (CTO) and Altaf Dhamani (CPO) — worked together at Yahoo Southeast Asia. They all moved over to HomeAway, which was later bought by Expedia for $3.9 billion in 2015  and Travelstop is their first independent venture following that spell. Already, the startup has a team of 12 in Singapore. Kirtane told TechCrunch in an interview that 90 percent of business travel in Asia is unmanaged. That’s surprising since the region accounts fo...

The post Eventbrite files for $200 million IPO appeared first on BardTech . Eventbrite filed an IPO today for $200 million, confirming reports earlier this summer that the event-planning company plans to go public later this year. According to the document , the company plans to raise $200 million from selling Class A shares, but has yet to list the price per share. As for what Eventbrite intends to do with the new funds, many are pointing to the need to recover the company’s recent losses. While the company reported a net profit of $201.6 million in 2017, operating and loss expenses still left the company unprofitable that year. The company reported a net loss of $38.5 million in 2017 and a loss so far in 2018 of $15.6 million. However, the company does report a net revenue growth of 51 percent and reported a net revenue of $142 million so far in 2018. The filing lists Goldman Sachs as a lead underwriter and bolsters the company’s commitment to providing a platform to “creator...