Last year – Vishal Garg went from being the relatively unknown CEO of an online mortgage services company to being the boss who laid off 900 people on a Zoom call. The video and Garg went completely Now, the company says it will lay off another 3,000 employees, a third of its workforce. Sources familiar with internal happenings at the company told TechCrunch on Monday that the online mortgage lender Better.com was reported to be poised to lay off roughly 50% of its staff of about 8,000 this week. According to a Better.com
Antler East Africa, the Nairobi office of VC firm and venture builder Antler, has closed a $13.5 million fund to invest in early-stage tech startups in the region. Antler, which was first launched in 2019, actually intended to raise $10 million but ended up with an extra $3.5 million. It runs a full venture building model with two cohorts each year. Five cohorts with 153 founders have passed through the accelerator programs so far, and the firm has made 14 investments, according to reports and a few of them include
Bloom — not to be confused with the Robinhood-like app for teenagers in the US — is a fintech firm that offers a “high-yield” savings account, free FX, and adjacent digital banking services so customers can save in a stable currency, the dollar, and spend as they go in local currencies. The company, which was founded by Ahmed Ismail, Youcef Oudjidane, Khalid Keenan, and Abdigani Diriye in late 2021, today, announced that it is part of Y Combinator’s Winter 2022 startup batch after receiving early admittance last July. Bloom, which only launched last week from stealth, raised a pre-seed
Ahead of international women’s day – Instagram announced that it will be introducing a special tag for professional accounts and influencers that ensures they receive credit for their content. The enhanced tagging feature lets Instagram users show additional information on “People Tags” on their posts. Beyond just a profile’s username, the tags will highlight the creators’ self-designated profile category (titles are chosen from Instagram’s list of categories, like “rapper” or “fashion stylist” or “photographer”) as well as their account’s full name or title. The information is shown when users tap
Karl Olutokun Toriola, a telecommunications engineer who is currently serving as the Chief Executive Officer of MTN Nigeria, announced that in an effort to aid the citizens of Ukraine, MTN Nigeria has announced that they have made all the calls to and from Ukraine free. MTN Group Limited, formerly M-Cell, is a South African multinational mobile telecommunications company, operating in many African and Asian countries. Its head office is in Johannesburg. “We understand that some of our customers in Ukraine have experienced challenges to contact their loved ones. As a result, we
TechLit Africa redistributes recycled technology to build computer labs in African schools. With 4,000 students and 20 teachers, the organization has built 10 computer labs in rural Kenya and is currently working on the next 100 computer labs. Cheboi, who grew up in a poor rural village in Kenya, landed a full scholarship to study computer science at Augustana College in Illinois and later built a school in Kenya, Zawadi, where she started TechLit Africa. When speaking about her startup, she says: “I grew up in rural Kenya, Mogotio. The
The pandemic has had widely varying effects on different generations, races, nations, sectors, and genders. And while there is a lot going on in the world right now we want to take a moment this International Women’s Month to celebrate women who have landed a new gig in the tech industry from IT to cybersecurity. So to brighten up your day we’ve compiled a list of inspiring tweets from women of color.
What are the best Slack communities for Black tech professionals? With so many out there, it’s hard to decide which ones are right for you. So We’ve compiled a list that you should check out. Below is a list of 17 thriving hubs of discussion, collaboration, and innovation spanning virtually all technical specialisms. As a tech journalist getting involved in these Slack communities has helped me learn a lot in a short space of time. Cleveland Tech The Slack community for North East Ohio’s diverse tech community. Developers, designers and tech people of
Microsoft announced plans today to support 10,000 startups in Africa over the next five years through a series of initiatives including partnerships with accelerators and incubators across the continent. The global tech company is also partnering with venture capital investors to facilitate access to $500 million in potential funding and has launched the Startups Founders Hub in Africa. Microsoft will enable digital transformation powered by Africans for Africa through the Africa Transformation Office. Microsoft said that it is already working with Banque Misr, Global Venture Capital, and Get Funded Capital. On top of that,
Taking a trip down memory lane has gotten Nas in a bit of trouble and he’s now facing a new lawsuit with none other than Hip-Hop photographer Al Pereira, who also went into a legal battle with Kyle and Kendall Jenner back in 2017. Pereira has reportedly filed over 450 copyright infringement lawsuits since 2015. After Nas posted a picture of himself, Tupac, and Redman from July 1993 to his Instagram, Pereira filed a lawsuit against him in February for sharing it without permission or licensing the work, according to
