TechCrunch Master Template TechCrunch Newsletter
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| Hello and welcome to Daily Crunch for Monday, January 31! Weâre putting a bow on the first month of the year today, but that doesnât mean weâre looking back. Not at all. First, news is popping off like firecrackers. And, weâre looking ahead because weâre doing a lot of really fun live podcasting this year. See you there! â Alex |
| | Image Credits: Blue Planet Studio / Getty Images |
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The TechCrunch Top 4 Sony buys Bungie as gaming consolidates: If you have been reading TechCrunch for more than a few days, youâve seen us cover the Take Two-Zynga deal, and the recent Microsoft-Activision Blizzard deal. Today, Sony threw another transaction into the mix, announcing that it will buy Halo-maker Bungie for billions. There have been other transactions lately as well, and if the latest agreements make it past antitrust authorities, weâll head into next year with a more consolidated gaming industry than ever. Itâs not yet clear if that will prove a power up or a debuff for gamers. The now-infamous Bolt CEO is out: Following waves of power-posting Twitter threads attacking some of the more prominent power nexuses in tech, Ryan Breslow is out as the CEO of Bolt. Bolt competes in the one-click checkout space. Regardless of how you view the Breslow drama, he holds super-voting shares in Bolt, per TechCrunch reporting, so heâs not going anywhere too far, we reckon. Spotify tries to patch the Joe Rogan flap: After some prominent musicians decided that they didnât want to have their material available on Spotify, protesting the music platformâs deal with controversial podcast host Joe Rogan, the company began to work to beat back criticism. It detailed its guidelines, and said it would make some changes to its podcast setup. The market works! Sadly, not all capitalists are able to not lose their mind when it does, in fact, work. Citrix to go private in PE megadeal: With tech stocks under the hammer thanks to changing public market preferences and tightening central bank policies, it may be deal shopping season for private equity. Today, Vista and a friend decided to buy remote-desktop company Citrix for north of $16 billion. The idea is to turn Citrix and the already-private Tibco into a sort of enterprise stew. Will that work? |
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Startups/VC Letâs start today in France. The French startup scene had a pretty darn good 2021, meaning that more deals from the country are hitting our radar. Today itâs Pennylane, which just raised $57 million in a Series B to âreplace legacy accounting solutions in France,â and its continent at large. If you arenât following our own Romain Dillet on the France beat, youâre missing out. Scooting along, the trend of Big Funds Investing Earlier is not letting up, it appears. TCV has a new $460 million fund ready to go as early as Series A, despite the fact that it raised a multi-billion fund not many quarters ago. Our take is that this will help keep early-stage startup deals expensive. Spinning the globe, letâs talk about Africa. Thereâs a new fund with $200 million in the market looking for growth-stage startups on the continent. And, Tiger made its second investment into an African company, we wrote today, this time putting capital into Bamboo, a fintech startup that is bringing U.S. equities to the Nigerian market. Employees pass on Better.com CEOâs return: If you return to lead your old team and they decide ânaw,â are you still a leader? TechCrunch reports that Better.comâs staff are hitting the âhell noâ button and opting out of working there after the company brought back its disgraced CEO. Jupyter the platform: If you mess about with data, thereâs a good chance you are familiar with Jupyter Notebook. Itâs a scratchpad for data scientists to take notes, interact with code, and more. Deepnote wants to build a âdata science platform on top of Jupyter-compatible notebooks,â TechCrunch reports. The company just raised $20 million. GitHub for hardware? Startup AllSpice is not a spice, nor is it a guerrilla Old Spice marketing campaign. Instead, the company is creating a âcollaborative hub designed for hardware development,â TechCrunch reports. Probably every industry needs a GitHub-style central knowledge repository? Expect to see more startups working along similar lines. Qlub wants to shake up how you pay for food: Per Mike Butcher, Qlub is akin to Sunday in that it wants to help consumers pay for their orders via QR codes instead of restaurant staff helping them check out. The company just raised $17 million. |
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| Elise King, program director of Human Venturesâ entrepreneur-in-residence program, interviewed three founders from the company’s portfolio to learn more about the tactics they used to acquire data in their pursuit of product-market fit. Pre-MVP/customer discovery phase: Tiny Organics Mid-MVP phase: Tabu After product is in-market: Teal “The overarching theme seems to be this: Listen to your demographic, learn from their experiences in order to find a way to truly service them, and donât be afraid to pivot if needed,” advises King. Read More |
| | Image Credits: RichVintage / Getty Images |
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Big Tech Inc. Pinterest now lets you see pinned furniture IRL: The idea of wanting to see furniture in situ before buying is a good one. Some retailers have tools to help consumers do just that. Pinterest is getting in on the action, working with some of those same retailers. This fits into the general concept of Pinterest as more of an e-commerce company over time than a social network. |
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