Roku nearly doubles since IPO, up another 13% on day two

 Digital streaming business Roku has soared in its public debut. After pricing its IPO Wednesday at $14 per share, Roku finished its first day of trading at $23.50, up nearly 68%. And by the end of Friday, Roku closed at $26.54, or up 90% in less than 48 hours. The company is now valued at about $2.6 billion. So this must be great news for the company, right? Well, sort of. Read More

Alibaba is leading a $27M investment in open source database startup MariaDB

 Alibaba has spent 2017 pushing its cloud computing business and now it is preparing to make its first major investment in a Western startup in the space.
The Chinese e-commerce giant has agreed to lead a €22.9 million ($27 million) investment in MariaDB, the European company behind one of the web’s most popular open source database servers, according to a source with knowledge of… Read More

Roku surges 30% in stock market debut

 Roku is off to the races since going public on the stock market. After pricing its IPO shares at $14, the digital content streaming company began trading at $15.78 per share Thursday morning. It’s now trading above $18, up about 30%. Bankers usually recommend that companies “pop,” in the debut, to make a good impression on public investors. But this can be hard to predict. If… Read More

Eden raises $10 million Series A to build out its office management marketplace

 Eden, the office management and tech support platform, has today closed $10 million in Series A funding led by Spectrum 28, with participation from Fifth Wall Ventures, Bessemer Venture Partners, Y Combinator Continuity Fund, Canvas Ventures, Comcast Ventures, Eniac Ventures and other existing investors. Eden started out as a tech support service for both businesses and consumers. The… Read More

Managed By Q, the office management system, acquires Hivy

 Managed by Q, the platform that helps office managers handle day-to-day operations, has made its first acquisition, picking up Y Combinator graduates Hivy for an undisclosed amount.
Managed By Q lets office managers book cleanings, handy work, IT help, and order office supplies thanks to a partnership with Staples. MBQ has raised upwards of $72 million and now serves New York, Chicago, San… Read More

Didi invests $200M in Chinese auto trading platform RenRenChe

 China’s Didi Chuxing is already well-known for making investments, but this time around the ride-sharing company has stepped beyond backing companies in its core industry with its latest deal. That’s because Didi has backed RenRenChe, China-based online peer-to-peer car marketplace, via a strategic investment that is confirmed at $200 million. It’s not clear what… Read More

Facebook drops no-vote stock plan, Zuck will sell shares to fund philanthropy

 Mark Zuckerberg has gotten so rich that he can fund his philanthropic foundation and retain voting control without Facebook having to issue a proposed non-voting class of stock that faced shareholder resistance. Today Facebook announced that it’s withdrawn its plan to issue Class C no-vote stock and has resolved the shareholder lawsuit seeking to block the corporate governance overhaul. Read More

Live from Disrupt SF: Equity talks Slack, Lyft and flying cars

 Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s weekly venture capital-themed podcast where we work to unpack the numbers lurking behind the news.
This week we have a special episode for you all. We recorded live from Disrupt San Francisco, right in the middle of the main floor. From the front, this is what it looked like:

 
Teamwork!
It was our second-ever live show. Thanks for… Read More

DogBuddy, the European dog sitting marketplace, scores €5M Series A

 DogBuddy, a pan-European online marketplace for dog sitting, has closed €5 million in Series A funding, money it plans for further expansion. Backing the London-headquartered startup in this round is existing investor Sweet Capital, the investment fund started by the founders of King.com, and a number of new unnamed private investors. It brings total raised by DogBuddy to €10 million. Read More