Author: Richard Dal Porto

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Hello and welcome to Daily Crunch for September 24, 2021. Hanging in there, everyone? It was more than a busy week, but the TechCrunch team is still ticking along, covering the startup world just for you. If you need to catch up on who won Battlefield this year, the Equity podcast crew has you covered. And with that, let’s begin! — Alex

The TechCrunch Top 3

• China bans crypto (again): If you have paid any attention to the larger world of cryptocurrencies, you’re familiar with bad news from China. Over the past few years, the country has put an increasingly wet blanket on its place in the international crypto economy. More of the same from China today was enough to ding the value of major cryptos — not a great note to end the week on if you were Coinbase or Robinhood.
• SoftBank triples down on Latin America: The battle to build the next great tech company is a global scrap, and few regions are as hot as Latin America. One reason that LatAm has done so well in recent quarters has been a huge influx of capital from SoftBank. And as we learned this week, the Japanese telco and startup mega-investor has billions more earmarked for Latin American startups.
• It’s a good time to bootstrap: Looking back at a few Disrupt panels on alternative fundraising, going public and more, TechCrunch took a look at today’s bootstrapping economy. With more ways for startups to rake in capital than ever, the need to raise venture capital could be in decline for certain startup types — even as global venture capital totals shoot higher.

Startups/VC

• Will consumes say “nope” to Noops? Well, the plant-based pudding company Noops certainly hopes not. It just raised $2 million after raising $2 million just a few months ago. The market for alt-milks is big. Perhaps oat milk puddings will become the next oat milk? Lerer Hippeau provided the new capital.
• Say hello to OpsObs: Avenue thinks that “operations observability” is going to be a hot ticket, and after launching its product last week, the startup announced that it has raised $4 million. Per TechCrunch reporting, the goal of Avenue is “give operations their own tools to monitor teams” via a “command center” of sorts. As someone who has never seen a chart in a UI I didn’t want to read, I presume that this will quickly become a trillion-dollar business.
• Ukio raises $9M for longer-stay rentals: One thing that Airbnb noticed during the pandemic was that while short stays were taking a whacking, longer-term rentals rose in popularity. Ukio is a startup-sized bet on the observation, offering units with rental schemes with terms of a month or longer. So, do you want to go work in Spain for a month? Ukio might have just the spot for you.

How Ryan Reynolds has mastered authentic marketing

Most people know Ryan Reynolds from his movies, but he also owns a majority stake in Mint Mobile, a mobile virtual network operator, which has grown more than 50,000% in the past three years. He also invested in Aviation Gin before selling it for a staggering $600 million last year.

He’s also a founder of Maximum Effort, the marketing firm that promotes the “Deadpool” franchise, Aviation Gin, Mint Mobile and that viral Match.com ad featuring Satan and the year 2020 as a match made in hell.

He spoke to Jordan Crook about how startups can adapt his concept of “fast-vertising” to use real-time cultural moments as a springboard for building their own brand buzz, among other things.

“When we lead with creative and we have an idea or are inspired by something, we get quite aggressive with our excitement and try to make something infectious around it,” said Reynolds.

(Extra Crunch is our membership program, which helps founders and startup teams get ahead. You can sign up here.)

Big Tech Inc.

• U.S. doles out $1.2B for underserved internet connectivity: Tired of all the bad news in the world? We are too. In good news, the U.S. regulatory body responsible for domestic internet connectivity is rolling out big funds to help school districts get more kids online. It’s hard to do homework or participate in remote school without a connection, and not every kid has one. There’s more money coming as well, TechCrunch reports.
• Will the U.K. fund its ambitious AI strategy? The U.K. government wants the island nation to be a world leader in AI. Fair enough. But questions remain about just how much that will cost and if the same government is going to put up the required duckets. To be a leader in the global AI race, one merely has to beat out China, the United States and the EU for supremacy. Let’s see what Boris has planned.
• Amazon brings Prime Video Channels to India: Indian Amazon customers can now subscribe to eight different digital channels in their country, including “Discovery+ [for] $4 per year, Mubi $27, Hoichoi $8.2, DocuBay $6.8, ErosNow $4, Lionsgate Play $9.5, manoramaMax $9.5 and ShortsTV $4,” TechCrunch reports. Amazon’s digital media ambitions appear undaunted, so expect more on this theme in coming quarters from both the Indian market and others.

And to close us out, Chris Pratt is apparently taking on the voice role for famous digital character Mario in an upcoming movie. We don’t get it either.

TechCrunch Experts: Growth Marketing

TechCrunch wants to help startups find the right expert for their needs. To do this, we’re building a shortlist of the top growth marketers. We’ve received great recommendations for growth marketers in the startup industry since we launched our survey.

We’re excited to read more responses as they come in! Fill out the survey here.

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Hello and welcome to Daily Crunch for September 23, 2021. We just put the final bow on Disrupt, which went pretty damn well. Thanks to everyone who came out, and, of course, a big huzzah to the winner of Startup Battlefield (more below).

TechCrunch’s next event is SaaS-focused, so be sure to mark your calendars! — Alex

The TechCrunch Top 3

• Cellino wins Disrupt Battlefield: From an incredibly competitive group of finalists, Cellino took home the top prize. The startup’s platform to automate stem cell production brings together lasers and AI, it turns out. Its vision impressed the judges during today’s final presentations, besting other strong competitors like Nth Cycle, which was the runner-up. Congrats, Cellino!
• Twitter’s product team pounds Red Bull, moves deeper into crypto: The drumbeat of new products from Twitter continued today, with the company announcing “support for tipping with crypto, NFT authentication” and more. The social network has also moved into email newsletters and social audio in recent quarters. And, notably, it has managed the product deluge while not harming its core service — thus far, at least.
• The limits of edtech: The CEO of Duolingo joined TechCrunch at Disrupt this year, sitting down with our own edtech expert Natasha Mascarenhas. The two dug into the ethics of paywalling education content and how to make money without sacrificing core values.

Startups/VC

While Cellino won our yearly Battlefield competition, it was joined in the finals by four other startups that we found impressive:

• Adventr: Software to create interactive videos.
• Koa: Savings-focused fintech aimed at the African market.
• Nth Cycle: Materials recycling tech that can be applied to batteries.
• Tatum: An API-hook for the larger crypto economy.

Now, the rest of the startup news:

• Fintech valuations are red-hot: Thanks to a few recent IPOs, the public market is making it clear that the value of fintech revenues at tech startups is greater than many expected. For startups, it’s good news.
• Clubhouse kinda takes on Discord: Clubhouse is best known for public chats. Discord is best known for private chats. So when Clubhouse released work on private rooms, we took note. The service has a new feature called “Wave” that “makes it easier to start private rooms with friends when you see that they’re online,” per TechCrunch.
• Syng closes ​​$48.75M Series A for at-home spatial audio: If you are content to listen to music with your laptop speakers, Syng is not for you. But if you are the sort of person who tinkers with the music setup of your home for max oomph, Syng’s “triphonic” hardware that wants to bring spatial audio to the home could be your jam.
• Open-banking startup Vyne raises $15.5M: According to our own Ingrid Lunden, the concept of open banking is enjoying a moment in the spotlight. Per my colleague, open banking is “a new approach to payments and other financial services that disrupts traditional card-based infrastructure by linking directly into banks,” and Vyne wants a piece of the action. Focused on merchants, the company just locked down eight figures of new capital for its vision.
• There’s infinite capital for grocery delivery startups: Many grocery delivery companies in Europe are working to get deliveries done more quickly. Jiffy is one of them. Jiffy is also racing through its capital raises, putting $28 million on to its balance sheet after being founded this April.

To close out our startup section, here’s the latest TechCrunch rundown of robotics news. Apple’s Foundation show comes out tomorrow, so this feels somewhat timely for the Asimov fans out there.

Duolingo doesn’t want to disrupt the college degree

Duolingo CEO and co-founder Luis von Ahn has appeared at TechCrunch Disrupt before, but this year was his first time representing a public company.

A few months ago, reporter Natasha Mascarenhas described Duolingo’s debut as the “bellwether edtech IPO of the year,” so she was well equipped with questions about the company’s plans for boosting revenue. For example, is premium content in the cards?

“If we wanted to make more money in the short term, we could probably start paywalling things, but I think that would stifle our growth,” said von Ahn.

“If we start charging for some aspects of language learning, eventually we’re just gonna charge for everything.”

Here’s a recap, along with a video that captures the entire interview.

(Extra Crunch is our membership program, which helps founders and startup teams get ahead. You can sign up here.)

Big Tech Inc.

• Google, India scrap over leaked antitrust report: Google is in hot water in India over its dominant position in the country’s smartphone market. And a report of findings from the Competition Commission of India that leaked has led to the U.S. tech company to file “a writ petition in the Delhi High Court” against the commission.
• In other Mountain View news, Google is bringing Android’s automotive operating system to Honda cars in 2022.
• Sticking to Bay Area behemoths, our own Matthew Panzarino interviewed Apple VP Kaiann Drance and Human Interface Team designer Johnnie Manzari about a neat part of the new iPhone’s camera tech.
• And in good news for the two Bay Area tech companies whose mobile operating systems power the global smartphone market, global app spend is supposed to reach records in Q3 with some 36 billion downloads leading to $34 billion in revenue. That data is via App Annie, which we’d be remiss to not point out recently got hit with an eight-figure securities fraud charge.
• In bad news for one particular Bay Area tech giant — Apple — the European Union is looking to cut down on tech waste by mandating a charging cable standard. To which, can I just say, please make it so. Having 100 cables in my house is not great fun.

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Hello and welcome to Daily Crunch for September 22, 2021. Disrupt Day Two is racing along as I write to you, which means I am missing some Battlefield presentations. But good news for both of us: We have posts below about each of the companies showing off what they are building. We won’t miss out!

Tomorrow we’re crowning a new winner of Battlefield, by the by. See you there! — Alex

The TechCrunch Top 3

• Microsoft wants to kill Zoom, not Slack: That’s according to Slack CEO and possible Salesforce successor Stewart Butterfield. There’s some logic to the point — Microsoft’s Teams product competes with Zoom and Slack, but that doesn’t mean that it’s going after each equally. Butterfield also noted during Disrupt that many Slack customers are also Office 365 customers.
• Microsoft details new Surface hardware: Rudely, I have to say, Microsoft also held an event today. However, unlike our startup-focused shindig, Redmond wanted to talk hardware. Namely new Surface gear, one piece of which has a laptop screen unlike anything I’ve ever seen in production before. If you are into computers, take a peek.
• Facebook sheds value on revenue warning: Changes that Apple is making to the larger digital ecosystem are having effects on Facebook, TechCrunch reports. The social giant also noted that it underreported a metric that may have caused customers to think that their ads were underperforming by some 15%. Facebook stock fell nearly 4% on the day.
• If you want to have some fun, observe how your humble servant tried (and failed) to buy an NFT.

Startups/VC

As we did yesterday, we’re kicking off our startup notes with a Battlefield roll-call. A big shoutout to Startup Battlefield Editor Neesha Tambe, one of the TechCrunch staff that you don’t get to see much on the site. She’s amazing and helped the companies below prep for the event — not to mention taking point in making the hard calls about whom to include.

Battlefield roll call:

• Flite Material Sciences uses lasers, not chemical coatings, to keep ice and rust off surfaces.
• StethoMe’s smart stethoscope lets your kid’s doctor listen to their lungs from afar.
• Nymbull wants to guard your next Craigslist or Facebook Marketplace item for sale.
• Cellino is using AI and machine learning to scale production of stem cell therapies.
• Koa is helping African consumers make better money moves.
• The Blue Box is betting on the future of at-home breast cancer tests.
• Tide Encryption is ready to end the cyber breach pandemic.
• Prenome could help pregnant women better predict and manage gestational diabetes.
• Nth Cycle wants to revolutionize metals processing for recyclers and mine operators.
• Carbix spins emissions into gold — or at least useful minerals.
• Keep Technologies wants to turn a cup holder into a security guard for your car.

But that was hardly all. Startups were busy today:

• Here’s what Canva CEO Melanie Perkins looks for in a potential acquisition, for example.
• Also, electric bike company Ubco just raised $10 million, which makes us pine for a future in which cars don’t run cities.
• Here are notes on how Calendly is building a platform, one with scheduling as the central element. As someone who actually works for Google Calendar, this hit home.
• Finally, Brave, which is building a privacy-focused browser, has “launched a non-tracking video conferencing add-on out of beta.” I need to give that a spin, frankly.

Dear Sophie: What’s the difference between IEP and the latest proposed startup visa?

Dear Sophie,

What’s the difference between International Entrepreneur Parole and the latest proposed startup visa?

Do you think the startup visa will become a reality? If so, when?

— Financial Founder

(Extra Crunch is our membership program, which helps founders and startup teams get ahead. You can sign up here.)

Big Tech Inc.

Big companies were busy as well, which means we have a little bit more news to nosh on. Enjoy!

• Patreon wants to support adult-content creators: Maybe you haven’t heard, but porn is a big deal on the internet. OnlyFans is a good reminder of that fact. Patreon has new notes out concerning its own platform, adult-content creators and how the two might work together.
• More evidence that self-driving tech is slowly parallel parking its way into our lives: This time it’s news that FedEx is going to work with Aurora’s self-driving tech on an intra-Texas route. Slowly, and then all at once? When it comes to self-driving, let’s hope.
• Hot off buying Mailchimp for $12B, Intuit wants to buy startup equity a bit earlier: So it’s launching a venture capital arm. Yes, it’s almost odd that the software company — and rent-seeker via lobbying the federal government — didn’t have a venture arm before. But now it does. Corporate VC efforts are akin to corporate blogs a while back, something that was once rare and quickly became the norm.

TechCrunch Experts: Growth Marketing

TechCrunch wants to help startups find the right expert for their needs. To do this, we’re building a shortlist of the top growth marketers. We’ve received great recommendations for growth marketers in the startup industry since we launched our survey.

We’re excited to read more responses as they come in! Fill out the survey here.

To get a roundup of TechCrunch’s biggest and most important stories delivered to your inbox every day at 3 p.m. PDT, subscribe here.

Hello from day one of Disrupt. I just hopped out of watching Battlefield companies pitch — more on them below! — to write this for you. Disrupt is looking smooth, impressive and very TechCrunch so far.

I know it’s cliche, but I’m incredibly proud of what the TechCrunch crew managed for this year’s Main Event. A big hug to the TechCrunch events team, the sales team, the tech crew, editors and everyone else that makes this publication work but that you don’t see.

Now, the news! — Alex

The TechCrunch Top 3

• Matthew takes the new iPhone to Disneyland: If you were curious what the platonic ideal of a Matthew Panzarino post is, it’s this. Panz is our editor-in-chief, one of our Apple reviewers, a photog and a Disney fan. So, he brought all of that together to get some real-world testing done on the latest flagship iPhone. Enjoy!
• Gig workers protest Instacart: The history of leading boycotts of gig-work platforms is spotty in terms of impact, but that isn’t stopping thousands of Instacart shoppers from raising their voices as a collective. This time ‘round the Gig Workers Collective is asking “that customers refrain from reinstalling the app until five demands are met.” Those demands include a higher default tip and changes to commissions.
• PayPal rolls out financial “super app:” Super apps are like other apps, but more stuffed with features and capabilities. Perhaps best known as major players in various Asian economies’ digital realms, PayPal wants to bring the model to the United States. It’s new Super Duper Excellent App will include “direct deposit, bill pay, a digital wallet, peer-to-peer payments, shopping tools, crypto capabilities and more” TechCrunch reports.

Startups/VC

Let’s start with a host of Battlefield companies, coming straight from pitching at Disrupt earlier today:

• Built by a refugee, Enlight’s edtech tool bets it can help students hope harder.
• Luos is building an API to help embedded engineers connect easily to any hardware component.
• Nigerian fintech Hervest wants to bring financial inclusion to more African women.
• Tatum lets you interact with blockchains using API calls.
• Happaning aims to be a “Google Street View” for video.
• Folio’s 24-year-old founder is bootstrapping a curated, online bookstore.

And then there was everything else:

• French marketplace startup Mirakl has landed a $555 million round at a $3.5 billion valuation — a huge check for its SaaS play. Silver Lake led.
• The foundation behind Raspberry Pi minicomputers has raised a $45 million round at a $500 million valuation. London-based Lansdowne Partners and The Ezrah Charitable Trust led the round.
• Just raised $8 million to make better car insurance, a model that takes lots of capital and patience. Thus we have learned from watching both Root and MetroMile.
• Korea-based Business Canvas raised $2.5 million in a seed round for its document management service called “Typed.” Mirae Asset Venture Investment led the deal.
• Bilt Rewards, a fintech that helps renters earn points while paying rent, snagged a $60 million round at a $350 million valuation. Wells Fargo and Mastercard led, which makes pretty good sense. Points for sharing the new valuation, Bilt.
• Pipe snags former Stripe, HubSpot execs, expands to the U.K. Selling recurring revenues for cash is big business, Pipe shows. The company deals with both recurring software incomes and DTC subscriptions.
• Finally, Sorare raised $680 million at a $4.3 billion valuation. The company has created a fantasy football program based on NFTs. People love fantasy sports. Some folks are also really into NFTs. Perhaps at the union of both there is a big business? SoftBank certainly thinks so, leading this particular Series B.

Seth Rogen explains how Houseplant promotes cannabis without breaking the rules

Many celebrities have turned their personal interests into thriving commercial concerns: Ryan Reynolds owns Aviation Gin, Jessica Alba founded nontoxic goods startup The Honest Company, and George Clooney will earn as much as $1 billion for selling his tequila company.

This year, actor Seth Rogen co-founded Houseplant, which sells pottery, cannabis and related accessories.

“We’ve sold house goods in all 50 states at this point,” Rogen explained. “That’s us, developing a relationship and trust with customers in places where weed is not legal yet.”

In a conversation with Managing Editor Matt Burns at TechCrunch Disrupt, Rogen, CEO Mike Mohr and chief commercial officer Haneen Davies discussed some of the challenges of brand-building within the confines of a strict regulatory environment.

“I think the merger of House and Plant is what’s going to help us establish a brand name that goes beyond the limiting restrictions you have to abide by to communicate cannabis,” said Davies.

(Extra Crunch is our membership program, which helps founders and startup teams get ahead. You can sign up here.)

Big Tech Inc.

• Facebook’s product response to its very bad week is a battery-powered Portal: Sure, the WSJ is breaking news left and right that makes Facebook appear sneaky at best and downright mendacious at worst. But that isn’t stopping Facebook’s hardware team from releasing new gear.
• Roblox intros new age check: It’s optional, but the move is probably a little overdue and overall smart. Roblox is a gaming platform that kids love. Kids need protection. Here’s some!
• Former Yahoo company Tumblr moves subscription product to open beta: Ah, Yahoo. In a different life (iteration?), Yahoo was busy snapping up companies of all sorts. One such company it plunked down a mint for was Tumblr. Now Tumblr is owned by Automattic, after Verizon sold it. And then Verizon sold the rest of its media assets — TechCrunch included — to a private equity firm. Anyhoo, Tumblr’s push into the creator economy is now in open beta. Enjoy.
• Amazon refreshes the Kindle Paperwhite: This one took us by surprise, but Amazon’s Kindle lineup just got an updated SKU. The new Paperwhite has a larger screen, thinner bezels and USB-C charging.

TechCrunch Experts: Growth Marketing

Are you all caught up on last week’s coverage of growth marketing? If not, read it here.

TechCrunch wants you to recommend growth marketers who have expertise in SEO, social, content writing and more! If you’re a growth marketer, pass this survey along to your clients; we’d like to hear about why they loved working with you.

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Hello and welcome to Daily Crunch for September 20, 2021. It is Disrupt week, everyone, and TechCrunch is buzzing. Kicking off tomorrow morning, Disrupt is set to be a pretty butt-kicking affair. Check the agenda here, speakers here, Battlefield companies here, and if you want to see your humble servant doing his first run (last run?) at hosting, well, stick to the Extra Crunch stage. Nice tweets only, please.

See you tomorrow morning! — Alex

The TechCrunch Top 3

• Coinbase pulls plug on lending product: U.S. cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase has decided to shelve its “Lend” product that would have provided yield to investors who stake their crypto assets. Why? The U.S. regulatory body involved with such products views the creation as a security and said that it would sue Coinbase if it launched the product. Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong publicly made the case that the SEC was being silly, which didn’t seem to help much. Perhaps somewhat-snarky Twitter threads are not the way to regulatory victory.
• IPOs galore: Alrighty folks who care about public-market liquidity, we have a bevy of stories for you today. Here’s who is going to get rich from GitLab’s IPO, here is a dig into the new pricing for Toast’s IPO, and here are a few notes on Freshworks’ raised IPO price. Enjoy!
• Europe wants Facebook to turn its lights on: Or at least more on. In the wake of Facebook’s announced Ray-Ban camera-glasses, the “lead privacy regulator in Europe has raised concerns” about the hardware. At issue is the small light indicating that they are recording. Perhaps a bigger light would be better. That or we may be in another cycle of Glasshole discourse, which I am sure we’d all rather avoid.

Startups/VC

• You don’t have to go to space to image the Earth: That’s the lesson from Near Space Labs’ latest round of capital, a $13 million infusion. While several startups want to take lots of pictures of the Earth for commercial purposes from satellites (Albedo is one we’ve covered before), Near Space wants to use balloons that are merely, well, near space. Reaching orbit is cheaper than ever, but certainly still not cheap. Perhaps this is the way forward?
• Fivetran raises huge round, buys smaller company: Hard enterprise reporter Ron Miller covered this $565 million investment for TechCrunch, noting that Fivetran is now worth some $5.6 billion. The company is also shelling out $700 million for HVR, what Miller describes as a “data integration competitor that had raised more than $50 million.” The latter deal is a mix of cash and stock. Fivetran helps companies move data around. Given the scale of data in the world, that’s big business.
• Salesforce makes investment in Razorpay: As the Chinese market for startup investment retreats, India’s continues to collect checks, with the latest being an investment from Salesforce Ventures into Razorpay, a major fintech player in the Indian market that was last valued at $3 billion. This deal doesn’t appear huge in dollar terms, but that Salesforce is bridging the Pacific does in fact matter.
• Video and photo editing is an industry: As companies like Picsart raise nine-figure rounds, it’s perhaps not a surprise to see the company behind Facetune and other editing applications raise similar-sized rounds. In this case, Facetune developer Lightricks has put together a $130 million round. The company “operates more than a dozen subscription-based photo- and video-editing apps across iOS and Android,” TechCrunch reports.
• B2B fintech is hot: Airwallex just secured a $200 million round at a $4 billion valuation, which is notable not only for the dollars involved but also due to the fact that the company is based in Australia. The now-multiple unicorn offers embedded fintech services for other companies, as well as business banking services.
• A marketplace for selling businesses sells part of its business: That’s the news from Flippa, a marketplace where online businesses and digital assets can be bought and sold. The company just secured an $11 million round, and as part of that released what has to be the single worst non-GAAP metric since community-adjusted EBITDA. TechCrunch writes that the company “sees over 600,000 monthly searches from investors looking to connect with business owners.” To which I say, sirs, are you so afraid of sharing real metrics that that is what you went with?
• In related news, this newsletter is the leading internet missive that includes both “daily” and “crunch” in its heading, giving us a market-leading pace of readership activation and conversion of our newsletter-to-reads pipeline.
• Cars24 raises $450 million in cash, debt: Indian used-car marketplace Cars24 is now worth $1.84 billion after raising $340 million in equity capital and $110 million in debt. It’s a healthy round for a company that has “sold 400,000 vehicles to date.” See? That’s an actually useful metric. Not incredibly useful; a rate of sales would be better than an absolute stat, but still!

The next healthcare revolution will have AI at its center

In an excerpt from “AI 2041: Ten Visions For Our Future,” author Kai-Fu Lee makes the case that recent advances in artificial intelligence are starting to transform healthcare.

Studies have shown that AI is as good as humans when it comes to diagnosing disease, but the pandemic has accelerated the digitization of patient records and data.

“Over the coming decades, we can expect medical diagnosis to evolve from an AI tool that provides analysis of options to an AI assistant that recommends treatments,” writes Lee.

Lee identifies several areas where AI will improve outcomes in drug discovery, complex surgeries and monitoring, but also looks at potential concerns, such as legal liabilities.

“AI healthcare is not just a market — it represents a tidal wave of transformations that will change the entire industry.”

(Extra Crunch is our membership program, which helps founders and startup teams get ahead. You can sign up here.)

Big Tech Inc.

• Maybe we’ve figured out this generation of mobile operating systems: TechCrunch’s dive into iOS 15 notes that the new mobile OS brought with it quality-of-life improvements and feature-bumps to Apple’s own apps. That’s what you have to look forward to. Or, more precisely, you will update to the new code, I reckon, and then instantly forget that you have. Such is the state of today’s mobile OSes, which, along with smartphone hardware, seem to have reached a plateau of boring excellence. It’s time for a new paradigm to shake things up.
• Big Tech wins some awards that your parents cared about: How much stock do you put in the Emmys? Do you actually know what an Emmy is? I don’t. But it turns out that Netflix and Apple won some the other day. Good for them. It turns out that if you are among the most wealthy companies in the history of the world, you are able to buy talent and take enough shots on goal that you score some points. Or in this case, small, ugly trophies.

TechCrunch Experts: Growth Marketing

TechCrunch wants you to recommend growth marketers who have expertise in SEO, social, content writing and more! If you’re a growth marketer, pass this survey along to your clients; we’d like to hear about why they loved working with you.

If you’re curious about how these surveys are shaping our coverage, check out this interview Anna Heim did with Ammo, “Australian growth marketing agency Ammo helps startups calibrate their efforts.”

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Hello and welcome to Daily Crunch for September 16, 2021. We are still on the countdown to Disrupt, so make sure you have a ticket, and get ready to drop your pitch deck into the hat. We’re going to space! — Alex

The TechCrunch Top 3

• Tigers love robots: Sure we’re accustomed to seeing Tiger cut checks into every software company still alive, but did you know that the capital fund is also into physical goods? Our own Brian Heater has the news.
• What could stop the startup boom? Today on the site TechCrunch dug back through its coverage of the Q2 venture capital cycle, asking what could stop the momentum that we’ve seen in recent quarters. The short answer? Not too much. The heady startup market is more stable than you’d think, but only partially on its own merit.
• The American government gets serious about breaches: The U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is making sure that companies know that if their apps “collect personal health information [they] must notify consumers if their data is breached or shared with third parties without their permission.” Which is good. But how was that not always the rule?

Startups/VC

Apple held an event this week, so the technology market is still reverberating with takes about why it’s the iPhone 13 and not the iPhone 12S. Regardless of your take there, Apple’s long shadow is making itself known in other places. Like the market for helping folks find their gadgets. The Cupertino-based giant made waves the other month by introducing AirTags, in competition with Tile, a startup. Well, Tile is now back with $40 million in new capital. To war!

• Fiberplane raises capital to build Google Docs for SREs: Building software tuned for a particular market is hot these days. The strategy is akin to building an anti-Word, if you will. In Fiberplane’s case — the company just raised $8.8 million — it’s building a Google-Docs-style product for site reliability engineers, or SREs. Is that niche too small? Probably not?
• CodeSignal raises (again): Ah, credentialing. CodeSignal wants to make applying for developer gigs a bit more based on skill and a bit less based on where one went to school. Investors are lining up to fund its vision, dropping a fresh $50 million into the company’s coffers less than a year after it raised $25 million.
• Self Financial proves that credit-building is still venture-backable: Altos Ventures led a $50 million Series E for the company, which wants to help “consumers build credit and savings at the same time.” It’s a good idea, given how broken the American credit system still is today.
• Byju’s buys coding platform Tynker: The $200 million transaction will help Byju’s continue to expand in the United States. The Indian company’s bullishness on its own sector is perhaps balm to founders and investors worried about edtech in the wake of China’s decision to kneecap its domestic startup class chasing the market.
• Open Mineral: What a great startup name. And it is more than apt, as the company wants to bring transparency to the global commodities markets. Which is good, as more transparency means better price discovery, and a more efficient market. Open Mineral just closed $33 million in a Series C.

3 strategies to make adopting new HR tech easier for hiring managers

Most of us prefer to trust our instincts instead of letting automated tools help us make decisions, particularly when it comes to hiring. But that’s not smart.

If your startup has an ad hoc hiring process, you’re not tracking candidates properly, there’s little consistency regarding how they’re treated and bias plays a major role in who gets hired.

It’s fine to be skeptical of automated hiring tools —- but not ignorant.

(Extra Crunch is our membership program, which helps founders and startup teams get ahead. You can sign up here.)

Big Tech Inc.

• Twitter Super Follows may not be super lucrative: Data coming out from the Twitter Super Follows product indicates that its early performance is lackluster. So much so that it might go the way of Fleets. Do you Super Follow? If so let us know.
• Ford spends to boost electric truck production: Worried that EVs might be a fad? Stop fretting. Traditional American car company Ford is doubling-down on its electric F-150 production, TechCrunch reports. And if Ford is doing well with EVs, they well and truly are mainstream.
• Lucid Air snags the longest-range EV title, surpassing Tesla: Dodging the Elon fanboys for a minute, Lucid Motors is pushing the state of the EV art a bit forward with a car that sports a 520-mile range. That’s one hell of a hike. In general terms, the distance bump that Lucid — recall that the company is going public later this year — intends to offer could spark an arms race regarding EV range. Yes, please.

TechCrunch Experts: Growth Marketing

TechCrunch wants you to recommend growth marketers who have expertise in SEO, social, content writing and more! If you’re a growth marketer, pass this survey along to your clients; we’d like to hear about why they loved working with you.

If you’re curious about how these surveys are shaping our coverage, check out this guest column by Bryan Dsouza on Extra Crunch, “5 things you need to win your first customer.”

To get a roundup of TechCrunch’s biggest and most important stories delivered to your inbox every day at 3 p.m. PDT, subscribe here.

Hello and welcome to Daily Crunch for September 15, 2021. Today we have everything in the newsletter. Bad behavior in the crypto world? Yep. Why the Mailchimp deal might make good sense? You bet.

But before we get into the mix, a few TechCrunch notes. First, Jordan Crook’s regular series of streamed chats with investors and founders is now called TechCrunch Live. And Chamath Palihapitiya is coming to Disrupt. Which is in less than a week!

Oh, and as you are reading this, SpaceX’s first “all-civilian crew” may be taking off into space. In case you wanted to tune in. — Alex

The TechCrunch Top 3

• Today in bad actors: Want to know if you are living in overheated times? Check for a rise in fraud and related bad behavior. And oh boy has there been news in the last day. Startup App Annie will pay $10 million in SEC fines for securities fraud. Which is Not Good. And NFT marketplace OpenSea ate a buffet of crow earlier today when it admitted that an executive at the concern was front-running NFT sales.
• Maybe the Intuit-Mailchimp deal is not dumb? Sure, TechCrunch’s first reaction to the news that TurboTax parent company Intuit wants to spend $12 billion on Mailchimp was skeptical. But Ron Miller hit up a bunch of smart folks, and there was more positive sentiment to be recorded than we might have guessed.
• Tech companies are still going public: We’re waiting for Toast and Freshworks and Warby Parker to get their debuts launched, but other companies aren’t waiting for a clear news cycle. Secondary share marketplace Forge is going public via a SPAC, so we had to take a look.

Startups/VC

First things first, more news from the BNPL beat. Yes, the method of paying for a transaction in installments is still making news. This time it’s Ascend raising $5.5 million to bring BNPL services to the commercial insurance world. Recent liquidity in the fintech market could help drive fresh venture interest in coming quarters.

• Sendcloud raises $177M for SaaS: No, not that SaaS. Shipping as a service, in Sendcloud’s space. The Dutch startup now flush with SoftBank cash “has built a service [that provides] a cloud-based platform to easily organize and carry out shipping services by choosing from a wide range of carriers and other options.” It sounds a bit like a European Shippo?
• Rivian proves it’s not vaporware: After raising dump trucks worth of capital, Rivian’s first production R1T electric pickup has rolled off the line. It’s a big moment for the company and sets Rivian apart from a host of other EV companies that hope to match its new milestone. Also apparently there is a color called Rivian Blue, and I am here for it.
• Clubhouse hires head of news: NPR vet Nina Gregory has taken on the role of Clubhouse’s head of News and Media Publishers, TechCrunch reports. Her role will be to work with both the social platform and news orgs. Perhaps her job would be a smidgen easier if Clubhouse backer a16z wasn’t so antagonistic toward the media. But, hey, the hire still makes good sense.
• Speaking of news, SmartNews is now worth $2 billion: Sure, media is a trash business — mostly — but perhaps media aggregation is the golden ticket. Investors just put $230 million into news aggregator SmartNews, giving it a shiny new valuation. I have a soft spot for SmartNews as we partnered with them back in the Crunchbase News days, but past that, I am impressed and curious how it is going to generate the revenue needed to surpass its new price tag.
• Airbase further differentiates itself from Brex, Ramp: The corporate spend wars are good fun because there are a number of startups in the space that are growing quickly, raising money and making deals. And they are increasingly carving up their market. Airbase just built some new capabilities that may help it attack larger customers than what some of its rivals appear to have their eyes on.
• Finally today, Inspired Capital has raised a second fund just two years after its first.

5 things you need to win your first customer

Congratulations on shipping your product, but how much do you know about your target customers?

Companies that haven’t created an ideal customer profile and performed a SWOT analysis are making big bets on guesswork and intuition. Sometimes that works out, but more frequently, it leads to tears.

In a guest post that walks readers through the fundamentals of creating customer personals that map to your company’s goals, Grammarly product marketing lead Bryan Dsouza shares five basic requirements for customer acquisition.

“Understanding and executing on these things can guarantee you that first customer win, provided you do them well and with sincerity,” he says. “Your investors will also see the fruits of your labor and be comforted knowing their dollars are at good work.”

(Extra Crunch is our membership program, which helps founders and startup teams get ahead. You can sign up here.)

Big Tech Inc.

Want some government news? Yes, you do. Trust me. This stuff matters:

• Semiconductor sovereignty is a phrase that you should get used to reading: Back in the day, the ability for a nation to feed itself was pretty dang important. It’s less so today thanks to global trade. Taking its place in the Maslowian hierarchy of national needs is semiconductor The ability for a nation or bloc to make all the chips that it needs. Why? Because we’re in a global semiconductor crunch, and China is making waves — literally — about Taiwan, where much of the world’s silicon is manufactured. And Europe is looking to get its own processor hour in order.
• Sticking to Europe, Ireland is looking into how TikTok handles data. Why? Because it has questions about data from children and about what sort of transfers might happen with China.
• The founder and CEO of social media app Dispo, Daniel Liss, thinks that “the FDA should regulate Instagram’s algorithm as a drug.”
• Finally, in less controversial news, Walmart wants to work with Ford and Argo AI on autonomous deliveries. Which I am in favor of as it sounds like a way to get closer to self-driving cars.

TechCrunch Experts: Growth Marketing

TechCrunch wants to help startups find the right expert for their needs. To do this, we’re building a shortlist of the top growth marketers. We’ve received great recommendations for growth marketers in the startup industry since we launched our survey.

We’re excited to read more responses as they come in! Fill out the survey here.

Our editorial coverage about growth marketing includes articles from the TechCrunch team, guest columns and posts like “In growth marketing, signal determines success” by Jonathan Martinez.

Community

Join Danny Crichton, tomorrow Thursday, September 16, at 3 p.m. PDT/6 p.m. EDT on Twitter Spaces. Danny will be joined by Martin Ford, author of “Rule of the Robots: How Artificial Intelligence Will Transform Everything.” Make sure you’re following the TechCrunch Twitter account to stay up to date with our news and events.

To get a roundup of TechCrunch’s biggest and most important stories delivered to your inbox every day at 3 p.m. PDT, subscribe here.

Hello and welcome to Daily Crunch for September 14, 2021. It was an Apple day on the internets, so we’ve all spent the afternoon trying to figure out if we need a new smartphone. Answer? Probably not, but that won’t stop a good portion of the TechCrunch crew from deploying fresh Yahoo lucre into Cupertino’s market cap. We love this stuff.

On the TechCrunch front, Disrupt is in a week’s time. Your humble servant is going shopping later this afternoon so that he can look slightly less disheveled. Jordan, of course, will look brilliant on the Disrupt Desk. See you there! — Alex

The TechCrunch Top 3

• Apple drops grip of new hardware: Anytime Apple hosts an event, it’s like time stops in the technology world. If that should still be the case is up to you, but it remains fact. Here’s our rundown of iPhone news, Apple Watch news, iPad updates and a general roundup in case you want to go meta. Enjoy!
• Atlanta booming: TechCrunch continued its tour of U.S. cities today after hitting up Chicago and Boston in recent weeks. This time, we dug into Atlanta’s booming startup scene, which is seeing record capital inflows. We talked to some founders and investors to get the latest. Don’t forget that Atlanta just produced a decacorn exit.
• And speaking of decacorns, Canva just raised $200 million at a $40 billion valuation. In percentage terms, the Australian design software company managed to raise two bills for 0.5% of its equity value. A steal at twice the price. Why is Canva worth so much? Huge scale, as our notes regarding its revenue growth illuminate.

Startups/VC

Before we dive into our usual rundown of startup news, TechCrunch did a dig into the value of the myriad BNPL startups around the world through the lens of some recent acquisitions. I wrote it. Read it if that’s your jam.

• In light of the day’s Apple Fitness news, it matters that Tonal just announced live classes are coming to its service. Tonal competes in the hardware-and-software market against Peloton and other players. Notably it’s the startups of the world that are fusing hardware and software more than Apple in this case, which is mostly bundling services into its existing products. Regardless, good news for you Tonal users out there.
• 1047 Games closes $100M: If you are hot, Brian Heater writes, you are hot. And 1047 games with its hit title Splitgate is more than warm. So sweltering that it just closed a third round since May. What’s Splitgate? An FPS that includes portals. (Which frankly sounds awesome.)
• Grammarly opens up for developers: Grammarly is well known as a product that folks use to help tighten up their writing. But what if you wanted to bake Grammarly tech into your own product? Well, now you can. The company just announced a developer product. The finance nerd in me wonders how lucrative the new business line will prove, and if it will help the company file its damn S-1 already.
• EverAfter raises $13M, underscores that HRtech is still hot: Per our own reporting, EverAfter has built a “no-code customer-facing tool that streamlines onboarding and retention.” That’s a bit like Sora, a startup that TechCrunch has also written about. A few rounds focused on the same space is signal!
• Today’s Tiger round is Indonesian fintech Xendit: Xendit is now a unicorn thanks to a $150 million check led by Tiger. At this point, we reckon that every time Tiger’s managing partners go to dinner they tip $150 million. It’s the only number that they know! Regardless, the Jakarta-based fintech with a payments focus has big expansion plans that are now well financed.

Is it so bad to take money from Chinese venture funds?

Are founders in fundraising mode short-sighted when it comes to working with Chinese investors?

Asia Business development manager for Runa Capital Denis Kalinin studied data from iTjuzi, a database of Chinese venture capitalists and found:

 … Chinese funds invested around $250 billion in 2020 (three times higher than the figure reported in Crunchbase). This figure puts Chinese VC investments only 30% lower than investments by U.S. funds, but three times that of U.K. funds and 12.5 times more than German funds.

The pandemic, geopolitical tensions and other factors led many Chinese venture funds to reduce their international investments, but that’s largely “because during COVID, China’s economy recovered much faster than other countries,” writes Kalinin.

His analysis covers multiple angles: Chinese investments in Europe are catching up with those in Asia and the United States, half of China’s top cross-border investors are CVCs, and investors are particularly interested in fintech, deep tech and digital health at the moment.

“Chinese investors can bring value to foreign startups, but you need to study their expertise and how it can be useful for you.”

(Extra Crunch is our membership program, which helps founders and startup teams get ahead. You can sign up here.)

Big Tech Inc.

Before we get into the nitty-gritty of Big Tech news, an update from the U.S. government: “Biden’s new FTC nominee is a digital privacy advocate critical of Big Tech,” it turns out. That matters.

• LinkedIn pledges $25M to creators: In case your LinkedIn feed was lacking in pizazz, the Microsoft subsidiary has plans to bolster your content influx. A $25 million “Creator Accelerator Program” has been established to encourage more, well, creation. Also LinkedIn is getting into live audio.
• 51 more Starlink satellites take flight: We’re including this news item in Daily Crunch today in case you are also considering a move to rural Montana but need to stay employed.
• Spaceflight looks to fly to the moon: Elon’s space company is not the only player looking to get humans off the plant. Spaceflight will “shuttle customers on a lunar flyby mission next year,” which is more than neat. How much for a ticket?

TechCrunch Experts: Growth Marketing

We’re reaching out to startup founders to tell us who they turn to when they want the most up-to-date growth marketing practices. Fill out the survey here.

Read one of the testimonials we’ve received below!

Marketer: Andrew Race, Juice

Recommended by: Orin Singh, Merchant Industry

Testimonial: “We were referred to Juice by a family friend of my company’s owner, and as a personal courtesy, they said they were giving us their best guy. Naturally, we thought that is what everyone says, but they were not kidding. Andrew was singularly leagues above our previous marketing company. Having someone so knowledgeable and willing to learn a new industry proved to be the turning point for us.”

Community

From planned Twitter Spaces to impromptu chats with the Equity crew, the TechCrunch team is constantly on Twitter. Tomorrow, Wednesday, September 15 at 2 p.m. PDT/5 p.m. EDT, the Disrupt Battlefield judges will be talking on Twitter Spaces. On Thursday, September 16, at 3 p.m. PDT/6 p.m. EDT, Danny Crichton will be joined by Martin Ford, author of “Rule of the Robots: How Artificial Intelligence Will Transform Everything.” Make sure you’re following the TechCrunch Twitter account to stay up to date with our news and events.

Hello and welcome back to Daily Crunch for September 13, 2021. This is Alex and I am back! A big thanks to Greg for taking over last week while I was on staycation. It is lovely to be back with you all.

Before we dive into the news, a reminder that Disrupt is next week. So, make sure you have a ticket and get hype. More here. It’s going to be a heck of a show.

The TechCrunch Top 3+

• The Apple-Epic war far from over: While the internet digests the recent, controversial ruling between Apple and gaming giant Epic, the latter party is not letting the decision sit. Epic is appealing. What’s at stake is the monetization of mobile applications for years to come. Given how much money is in the mix, it’s not a huge surprise that the legal wrangling is taking time.
• Welcome back to IPO season: Toast, a software-and-hardware startup that is the, well, toast of Boston, is targeting a huge valuation gain in its IPO. So is Freshworks. We’re tracking both companies and will have more notes as they get closer to trading. Expect many, many more offerings in the coming weeks.
• China’s regulatory crackdown could harm its cloud market: That’s the recent summary of a report that TechCrunch covered, discussing the larger Chinese software market. News also broke earlier today that the Chinese government may break up Ant, the Alibaba financial affiliate, and that the country wants to reduce the number of EV companies its market currently supports.
• BREAKING NEWS TODAY: Apple has released a patch to a zero-day flaw “that affects every iPhone, iPad, Mac and Apple Watch,” TechCrunch reports. Update your devices, folks.

Startups/VC

• GrubMarket lands $120M to connect food growers, consumers: Sure, you’ve ordered food delivery. That’s one plank of the food game. But for distributors, wholesalers and supermarkets, there are far greater needs to be served than just what you and I can consume for dinner. That’s the market that GrubMarket plays in, and it just raised a huge bloc of cash to keep its growth rates up.
• BitSight raises from Moody’s, buys VisibleRisk: BitSight, a startup that “assesses the likelihood that an organization will be breached,” per TechCrunch, has purchased an Israeli cyber-risk-assessment startup VisibleRisk for an undisclosed price. The Moody’s round put $250 million into BitSight, funds that we presume it used to snag VisibleRisk. What’s the connection? Moody’s wants to use cyber risks in its credit ratings, we reckon.
• SpotOn also raises, buys smaller company: Unicorn SpotOn, which provides financial software and technology to small businesses, has raised a $300 million round that values the company at $3.15 billion. It’s also buying Appetize, “a digital and mobile commerce payments platform for enterprises such as sports and entertainment venues, theme parks and zoos.” The round is notable not only for its size, but also because SpotOn raised at a $1.875 billion valuation in May and a $625 million valuation last year.
• JumpCloud raises $159M: JumpCloud sells cloud directory services and a host of other cloud-based identity services. It’s now worth $2.56 billion, a tidy sum. Sapphire Ventures’ Jai Das led the round. He’s a nice dude in my experience. The company grew its customer base by around 40% since last November. I asked the story’s author Ron Miller why JumpCloud was cool enough for him to cover. He said that the company’s effort to “provide a range of identity services, such as single sign-on and multifactor authentication” is important.
• I suppose it’s time to learn what DevSevOps is: Every technology wants its own neologism. DevOps. Adtech. Finservices. Hell, even Databricks’ Lakehouse. Add DevSecOps to your personal lexicon. Per our own Ingrid Lunden, DevSecOps is “the area of IT that addresses the needs of security teams and the technical work that they need to do in their jobs.” Startup Rezilion just raised $30 million for its efforts to serve that particular market.

• Everyone loves an e-commerce platform play: Shopify is big. BigCommerce is growing nicely. And investors want to put capital into the next, similar effort. Enter Egyptian startup Capiter, which just snagged a $33 million round to “help manufacturers and sellers distribute products and [ … ] access them on a single platform” in Africa.
• To close out our startup coverage, GM just invested into radar software startup Oculi. The move fits neatly into the trend of self-driving cars getting better and better over time, even if they are not yet there, if you will.

3 keys to pricing early-stage SaaS products

Every founder who launches an enterprise software startup has to figure out the “right” pricing model for their products.

It’s a consequential decision: Per-seat licenses are easy to manage, but what if customers prefer a concurrent licensing model?

“Early pricing discussions should center around the buyer’s perspective and the value the product creates for them,” says Ridge Ventures partner Yousuf Khan, who previously worked as a CIO.

“Of course,” he notes, “self-evaluation is hard, especially when you’re asking someone else to pay you for something you’ve created.”

(Extra Crunch is our membership program, which helps founders and startup teams get ahead. You can sign up here.)

Big Tech Inc.

Kicking off our short big technology section today, let’s pick back up with the automotive theme from GM’s news we discussed above. Ford also made headlines today by hiring Mike Amend to be its chief of digital and information. That it is not surprising that Ford would make such a hire is good indication of where the automotive market is heading.

• Instagram thinks you follow too many people: That’s my read of the social service’s effort to build a product in its service that will allow users to favorite accounts and thus not miss their updates. Algorithmic timeline problems, I suppose.
• Dutch judge makes Uber sad: Sure, that’s a slightly subjective summary, but news that a Dutch judge has ruled that Uber drivers are actually employees is antithetical to the ride-hailing company’s position. So it can’t be happy. And what’s the opposite of happy?

TechCrunch Experts: Growth Marketing

Are you all caught up on last week’s coverage of growth marketing? If not, read it here.

TechCrunch wants you to recommend growth marketers who have expertise in SEO, social, content writing and more! If you’re a growth marketer, pass this survey along to your clients; we’d like to hear about why they loved working with you.

Community

Join Danny Crichton on Twitter Spaces tomorrow, Tuesday, September 14, at 2 p.m. PDT/5 p.m. EDT as he discusses whether remote work will make H-1B visas redundant with Sophie Alcorn, a lawyer at Alcorn Immigration Law and guest columnist for “Dear Sophie” on Extra Crunch.