Author: Arabian Media staff
Every year, TechCrunch’s Startup Battlefield pitch contest draws thousands of applicants. We whittle those applications down to the top 200 contenders, and of them, the top 20 compete on the big stage to become the winner, taking home the Startup Battlefield Cup and a cash prize of $100,000. But the remaining 180 startups all blew us away as well in their respective categories and compete in their own pitch competition. Here is the full list of the media/entertainment Startup Battlefield 200 selectees, along with a note on why they landed in the competition. Alltroo What it does: Helps celebrities manage their charity giveaways and…
Fizz is betting that Gen Z is tired of performing their lives on Instagram and TikTok. What started as a pandemic-era group chat frustration has turned into the dominant social platform on college campuses across the US, focused on the 99% of life that doesn’t make it into a highlight reel. Capturing the attention of a demographic typically glued to Instagram and TikTok, the app’s hybrid anonymous model and hyperlocal focus has made it what Solomon calls “the biggest college social app since Facebook.” Today we’re bringing you a conversation that Dominic Madori Davis had with Fizz’s co-founder and CEO Teddy Solomon from this year’s Disrupt, digging into why…
Although iconic founders like Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, and Mark Zuckerberg famously didn’t finish college, multiple studies show that the vast majority of successful startups had founders with bachelor’s or graduate degrees. Despite this data, the appeal of a dropout founder persists, though VC enthusiasm for the ‘un-degreed’ is far from constant. It is a phenomenon that cycles in and out of fashion, and right now it is certainly having a moment amid the AI boom. This trend is particularly evident during Y Combinator Demo Days, where founders are increasingly touting their dropout status in their one-minute pitches. “I don’t believe YC…
Fizz is betting that Gen Z is tired of performing their lives on Instagram and TikTok. What started as a pandemic-era group chat frustration has turned into the dominant social platform on college campuses across the US, focused on the 99% of life that doesn’t make it into a highlight reel. Capturing the attention of a demographic typically glued to Instagram and TikTok, the app’s hybrid anonymous model and hyperlocal focus has made it what Solomon calls “the biggest college social app since Facebook.” Today we’re bringing you a conversation that Dominic Madori Davis had with Fizz’s co-founder and CEO Teddy Solomon from this year’s Disrupt, digging into why…
Tade Oyerinde and Teddy Solomon know a few things about building communities that last. Afterall, Oyerinde is the founder and chancellor of the online school Campus, while Solomon is the co-founder behind the college social app Fizz. The two spoke at TechCrunch Disrupt this year, breaking down the strategies that helped them scale their companies while retaining consumer interest. Campus offers associate degrees in areas like information technology and business administration. It also offers certificates in specialities like cosmetology and phlebotomy. There are more than 3,000 students enrolled in Campus, and it employs more than 100 professors on at least a part-time basis, Oyerinde says. Oyerinde said Campus decided to launch à la carte courses since…
Every year, TechCrunch’s Startup Battlefield pitch contest draws thousands of applicants. We whittle those applications down to the top 200 contenders, and of them, the top 20 compete on the big stage to become the winner, taking home the Startup Battlefield Cup and a cash prize of $100,000. But the remaining 180 startups all blew us away as well in their respective categories and compete in their own pitch competition. Here is the full list of the government and legal Startup Battlefield 200 selectees, along with a note on why they landed in the competition. Aparti What it does: Uses AI to automate…
Over the last several years, fusion power has gone from the butt of jokes — always a decade away! — to an increasingly tangible and tantalizing technology that has drawn investors off the sidelines. The technology may be challenging to master and expensive to build today, but fusion promises to harness the nuclear reaction that powers the sun to generate nearly limitless energy here on Earth. If startups are able to complete commercially viable fusion power plants, then they have the potential to upend trillion-dollar markets. The bullish wave buoying the fusion industry has been driven by three advances: more…
The tech industry moves so fast that it’s hard to keep up with just how much has happened this year. We’ve watched as the tech elite enmeshed themselves in the U.S. government, AI companies sparred for dominance, and futuristic tech like smart glasses and robotaxis became a bit more tangible outside of the San Francisco bubble. You know, important stuff that’s going to impact our lives for years to come. But the tech world is brimming with so many big personalities that there’s always something really dumb going on, which understandably gets overshadowed by “real news” when the entire internet…
Universities and research labs have long been Europe’s deep tech treasure trove. Now, academic spinouts have consolidated into a solid startup funnel worth $398 billion — and VC money is following. According to Dealroom’s European Spinout Report 2025, 76 of these deep tech and life sciences companies have either reached $1 billion valuations, $100 million in revenue, or both. These include unicorns like Iceye, IQM, Isar Aerospace, Synthesia, and Tekever, which are now inspiring more funds to back university spinouts. Just this month, two new funds emerged that will bring more funding to talent emerging out of European tech universities,…
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