TechCrunch Master Template TechCrunch Newsletter
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| Hello and welcome to Daily Crunch for June 29, 2021. Have you ever wanted to ditch civilization and move to the woods, but still be able to work? We have good news if thatâs you. Below youâll find lots more, including Facebookâs latest product offering and how one startup wants to save bees. Enjoy! — Alex |
| | Image Credits: Duolingo |
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The TechCrunch Top 3 Duolingo is going public! Well-known edtech unicorn Duolingo is going public. TechCrunch has an overview of the IPO and a deeper dive into the companyâs business health. Based on traffic to our coverage on the matter since last night, yaâll are really into learning languages. Also make sure to check out the Duolingo EC-1. Facebook launches newsletters: Say hello to Bulletin, Facebookâs new newsletter service. Competing with Substack, Twitterâs Revu and other services, Facebook signed up a Boomer-friendly list of initial authors including Malcolm Gladwell. The social giant has a history of testing in-house versions of products that are successful externally. Weâll have to wait and see if Bulletin manages to survive on its own merit. SpaceX plans to spend billions on Starlink: According to Elon Musk, SpaceX is losing money on early Starlink connector kits. Starlink is the space companyâs low-orbit satellite network that could bring about global internet connectivity. Per TechCrunch reporting of Muskâs comments, âSpaceXâs overall investment in the project could be between $5 billion-$10 billion initially and as much as $30 billion over time.â For the sake of freelancers everywhere, letâs hope the tech shakes out to match the investment. |
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Startups/VC Up top today in our roundup of recent startup news is Beeflow. Weâre putting it at the top of the list because (1) Itâs about bees and (2) Itâs called Beeflow. Whatâs not to love? Per Jordan Crook, the startup may have an answer to the decimation of the global bee population. And it might make money to boot. Now, the rest of the news: Europeâs early-stage market is on fire: Thatâs the takeaway from a recent TechCrunch dig into the continentâs venture capital trade. So is Latin Americaâs and the United Statesâ. In brief, the regional startup zones of the world are becoming increasingly blurred thanks to Zoom deal-making; what was once true in one place may now be the case in every hub. Zomato to drop $100M on Grofer: The Indian tech scene is busy these days, with Manish Singh reporting that IPO-headed food-delivery giant Zomato intends to invest $100 million in online grocer Grofer. Grofer would become a unicorn in the transaction. SentinelOne could be worth $10 billion in its IPO:Â Thatâs the latest on the SentinelOne public debut, which weâve looked at here and dug into the pricing of here. The cybersecurity companyâs IPO could help kick off a hot third quarter for IPOs more generally, especially at the prices at which it is set to debut. $10M to teach soft skills with VR:Â Thatâs the latest on Virti, which wants to turn âa lot of subjectively assessed skills into more objective and measurableâ outputs. VR is cool, and soft skills matter. Letâs see what their union can bring. Please, no “Black Mirror” jokes. Givingli raises $3M for greeting card tech:Â Not every venture capital round is large. Some are small enough to fit into an envelope. Thatâs the case with Givingliâs latest round, which should give the digital card and gifting app more room to build out its service. And I would be remiss to not mention that I covered venture capital rounds this morning from co-op and Arrows, along with news regarding Accelepriseâs rebrand. |
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| In a recent private equity survey, 80% of respondents said their co-investments with people outside traditional VC firms outperformed their PE fund investments. Alternative investors are highly motivated, and because they’re seeking higher returns than are generally available in public markets, they are less daunted by risk. In return, they benefit from less expensive fee structures and develop close ties with VCs, enlarging the talent pool as they build investment skills. These relationships have direct benefits for VCs as well, such as more flexibility with diversification and consolidated decision-making power. “With the right deal structure, deal selection and deal investigation, co-investors can significantly increase their returns,” says C5 Capital Managing Partner William Kilmer, who wrote an Extra Crunch post for VCs considering an alternative path. (Extra Crunch is our membership program, which helps founders and startup teams get ahead. You can sign up here.) Read More |
| | Image Credits: Diana Ilieva / Getty Images |
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Big Tech Inc. Turning from the smaller upstarts to the megagiants, itâs been a good week to be a Big Tech company. Facebook crossed the $1 trillion market cap threshold, though it dipped back under the magic number this afternoon. Hereâs what else is going on from the Bigs: Shopify cuts its cut to 0%:Â Shopify will charge zero for developersâ first million in revenue that they make on its application marketplace. The move fits into a larger trend of app stores lowering their cuts as Apple fights tooth and nail to avoid doing the same with its own application emporium. The Shopify news is probably more aimed at e-commerce rival Amazon than Apple, but the move still gently undercuts Cupertinoâs argument that it deserves around a third of all commerce that happens on iOS. AI developers are coming:Â News out today from Microsoftâs GitHub product is notable, with the sub-org announcing an AI-powered tool that âsuggests code as you type.â GitHub teamed up with OpenAI to build the tool. For beginners, the coding service could prove to be super freaking neat. |
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| | Image Credits: SEAN GLADWELL / Getty Images |
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| | | Image Credits: Dimitri Otis / Getty Images |
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