Bitcoin is religion; web3 is greed

Hello and welcome to Daily Crunch for December 21, 2021. This is my final Daily Crunch with you for the year. So, let me just say thanks for reading since I took over writing the newsy bits of this newsletter. It could have gone horribly, frankly, given how much folks hate change in their inboxes. But, with open rates at an all-time high, y’all have welcomed the New Daily Crunch Crew with open arms, and we’re grateful. Here’s to an even better 2022 — and more jokes. —Alex

P.S. You should follow Miranda (Experts), Walter (TC+), Annie (editing) and Richard (editing) as they make this newsletter sing. Richard declined to share a link. He’s a ghost! But a friendly one.

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Startups/VC

But wait, there’s even more public market news! Yes, Snapdeal filed to go public, and our own Manish Singh (follow him; he’s amazing!) has the details. SoftBank is a backer of the New Delhi-based startup. Per its prospectus, the company anticipates raising around $165 million in its public-market debut. Recall that Snapdeal “once competed with Amazon and Flipkart in India [but] has lost considerable market share in recent years,” we wrote.

And speaking of companies going public, remember the Better.com fiasco in which the company’s CEO went viral for firing a bunch of staff on Zoom? And then a bunch of whacko stuff from the company came out? Well, we’re curious why Vishal Garg still has a job, so we did a little digging. There’s more to come on this story.

Next, a few new funds:

And a few rapid-fire pieces of startup news:

Demand Curve: How Ahrefs’ homepage educates prospects to purchase

If you’re building a homepage, the goal should be to increase desire while eliminating labor and confusion in order to increase conversions.

“People have short attention spans, so if your homepage is confusing, they’re going to leave,” Demand Curve’s Joey Noble writes in a guest post.

He tears down SEO platform Ahrefs’ homepage, providing actionable strategies you can use at your startup, including how to handle objections, use social proof to build urgency and establish credibility, and catering to your audience.

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

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