INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
Hello and welcome back to Startups Weekly, a weekend newsletter that dives into the week noteworthy startups and venture capital news
Before I jump into today topic, let catch up a bit
Last week, I wrote about Uber new &money& team
Before that, I told you about how SoftBank is screwing up.
Remember, you can send me tips, suggestions and feedback to
kate.clark@techcrunch.com or on Twitter@KateClarkTweets
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Brian Chesky, chief executive officer and co-founder of Airbnb Inc
(Michael Nagle/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
Airbnb growing up
Following thedeath of five peopleat a Halloween party hosted at a California
Airbnb rental, and a scathingVice reportoutlining Airbnb failure to prevent nation-wide scams, the company says it will begin verifying all
seven million of its listings.
Airbnb properties will soon be verified for accuracy of photos, addresses, listing details, cleanliness,
safety and basic home amenities, according to acompany-wide emailsent by Airbnb co-founder and chief executive officer Brian Chesky on
All rentals that meet the company new standards will be &clearly labeled& by December 15, 2020, he notes
Beginning next month, Airbnb will rebook or refund guests who check into rentals that do not meet the new accuracy standards.
These changes,
outlined fully here, come as Airbnb preps for an IPO or a direct listing slated for 2020
The company was in need of some serious additions to its barely-there security measures and it also needed to make a grand gesture (or two)
to Wall Street following multiple PR disasters over the last two weeks
Airbnb response to the recently-highlighted problems will help determine how it fares on the public market and given its quick and seemingly
comprehensive response, money managers may be pleased.
TechCrunch Disrupt Berlin 2017 in Berlin on 5 December 2017
ImageXDante for TechCrunch
Meet me in Berlin
The TechCrunch team is heading to Berlin again this year for our annual event, TechCrunch
Disrupt Berlin, which brings together entrepreneurs and investors from across the globe
We announced the agenda this week, with leading founders including Away Jen Rubio and UiPath Daniel Dines
Take a look at the full agenda.
I will be there to interview a bunch of venture capitalists, who will give tips on how to raise your first
Buy tickets to the event here.
VC deals
Coveo raises $172M at $1B valuation for AI-based enterprise search and more
Cyber-skills platform
Immersive Labs nabs $40M
Medopad raises $25M to develop biomarkers tracked via apps and wearables
Neural Magic secures $15M seed to run
machine learning models on commodity CPUs
Chronosphere launches with $11M Series A
Stealth fintech Digits nabs $10.5M from
Benchmark
Parabol, the meta-meeting software toolkit, raises $4M
Wardrobe picks up $1.5M for a new fashion rental service
YC-grad Elpha
