Latest edition: 23 September 2026London — published continuously since 2026Free forever
The Founder Gazette
Startup news, held to newspaper standards

Filed under: fundraising

14 stories

The archive, indexed. Every story carries its tags at the foot of the page.

Startup news

Claret Capital closes fourth growth debt fund at €575m

The London manager beat its own €500m target. What founders can borrow, and at what stage, has not been disclosed.

198 · 7 September 2026
Startup news

Kroll: growth pays 3x, margin above 25% pays nothing

Kroll's Summer 2026 software data puts public companies growing above 20% at 7.2x revenue and shrinking ones at 2.4x. Profitability barely moves the number.

162 · 31 August 2026
Startup news

CaaStle founder Christine Hunsicker sentenced to five years for fraud

The clothing rental company's founder was sentenced after a scheme that prosecutors put at $300m, built on false financial statements and invented growth.

127 · 23 August 2026
Startup news

Rillet raises $100m in 48 hours after a board meeting

The AI accounting company was not fundraising. It showed investors a quarter in which annualised revenue doubled, and a $1bn valuation followed two days later.

118 · 22 August 2026
Tips

Make the machine write your one-star review first

A prompt that asks an AI to play the disappointed venture capitalist, the recruiter or the Amazon reviewer. The technique costs nothing and the criticism arrives before the audience does.

102 · 20 August 2026
Venture capital

QuantumLight closes $500M second fund, doubling its first

Nik Storonsky's venture firm now has €432 million to test whether software can pick startups better than partners can. Founders pitching it are pitching a screening system called Aleph.

97 · 19 August 2026
Startup news

Ohio startup raises $15m to put out fires with 20 Hz sound

Sonic Fire Tech says its ceiling-mounted sound generator smothers flames in seconds and leaves nothing to mop up. It now has to convince the body that writes America's fire codes.

94 · 18 August 2026
Startup news

Investors sue Wondermind over $1.2m raise, alleging misleading claims

A lawsuit says the mental health company overstated its leadership, its partnerships and Selena Gomez's involvement. The complaint's contents have not been published in full.

80 · 14 August 2026
Founder story

Ex-Citadel trader raises $1.2m for clothing refresher spray

Maria Cabral Menezes left trading floors at J.P. Morgan and Citadel to sell a spray that freshens clothes between washes. Investors have put in $1.2m.

79 · 14 August 2026
Startup news

$350m vertical farming pioneer runs out of money

One of indoor farming's best-funded companies could not raise again. The economics of growing lettuce under lights did the rest.

62 · 12 August 2026
Regulation

SEC reopens the accredited-investor question again

The rule decides who a US startup may legally take money from without registering the raise. The threshold that has defined it for decades is back under review.

59 · 12 August 2026
Fundraising

Three AI firms hit $100m ARR. Multiples ran 50x to 100x

Harvey, Sierra and Legora each crossed $100m in annual recurring revenue within nine months. The venture capitalist Tomasz Tunguz argues the gap between their valuations is not explained by how fast they grew.

55 · 11 August 2026
Founder profile

Ex-principal took hundreds of meetings to raise $63m

Adeel Khan had no Stanford degree, no Google badge and no business plan. He says he had to make MagicSchool AI's user numbers impossible to argue with instead.

38 · 9 August 2026
Founder tips

YC partners say one word gives away an AI-written application

Applications to Y Combinator have grown 60% longer in three years, and the word "wedge" now appears in more than a fifth of them. Two partners have said publicly what that tells them.

33 · 9 August 2026