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| Hello and welcome to Daily Crunch for July 6, 2021. Weâre back after a holiday here in the United States. Not that that stopped global technology news, mind, so thereâs a lot to get into. Before we do, one more reminder about TechCrunch Early Stage later this week — your humble servant is running a session with venture capitalist Sarah Kunst about fundraising. Itâs going to rock. — Alex Read More |
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TechCrunch Top 3 Todayâs Top 3 are all about conflict. Between tech companies, between tech companies and governments, and between tech companies and their shareholders. Enjoy: - Governments versus tech: The scrap between Chinaâs government and Chinese ride-hailing company Didi escalated over the break, from the company having to stop accepting new users to losing its spot in app stores. The companyâs stock is down sharply today. Our read? Chinaâs government crackdown on tech is not over, and Chinese companies going public in America just hit a pace better described as glacial. Related: Twitter versus India is still rolling along, and itâs not going well.
- A cloudy mess:Â Remember that huge deal to award a cloud contract from the U.S. military to one major tech company? Microsoft won; Amazon pitched a fit. And now neither company will get the $10 billion deal. Womp.
- Box versus investors: Rounding out our conflict coverage, the latest from Box. Former cloud storage darling and present-day public enterprise productivity shop Box is locked in a lengthy argument with activist investor Starboard. Today, Box went the corporate equivalent of supernova by releasing a TikTok video of its communications with the investing group, essentially calling them out for hypocrisy. Not that that charge means much to amoral capital pools searching for above-market returns, but, hey, it made for some good headlines.
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Startups/VC Todayâs startup news includes a number of funding rounds, a neat new venture capital fund and some SPAC news from space (and Earth): - Super.mx raises $7.2 million: The Mexico City-based insurtech startup has put together a Series A for its âmanaging general agentâ approach to offering coverage. The startup claims to be able to âhandle the entire user experience just like a direct-to-consumer carrier, but with the breadth of product choice offered by an aggregator.â
- Single.Earth raises $7.9M for crypto-carbon tokens:Â Hereâs an idea that I donât fully understand: linking carbon credits to tokens that represent the real world. Thatâs the gist of Single.Earth, which wants to shake up how companies compensate for their carbon footprint. It uses MERIT tokens, and, per its website, is creating a âdigital twinâ of the natural world.
- Wagmo raises $12.5M for better pet insurance:Â Insurtech is a hot market because insurance is a huge market. So large that even its subdivisions are attracting startup competition. Wagmo — not Waymo, mind — wants to bring more pet services into its product to cover your pet more holistically.
Next, a new fund: - iFly.vc raises second fund worth $46M: I donât bring you many new venture capital fundraises because they seem a bit meta for our startup focus, but hereâs one regardless. Why include it? The venture capital group — which has a neat history, as the post details — relocated from San Francisco to Austin during the pandemic. Thatâs notable.
And from the SPAC beat: - Space SPAC:Â Sattelogic is going public via a SPAC. Its deck is light on past results and heavy on future incomes.
- Earth SPAC:Â Nextdoor is going public via a SPAC. Its deck is far more rooted in terrestrial things, like trailing revenue.
Finally, TechCrunch covered upcoming headphones from Nothing, a hardware upstart that we donât know much about. But it thinks its $99 headphone offering can compete with Appleâs AirPods Pro line. Which cost 2.5x as much. If a startup can manage that, weâll be super impressed. And Nothing will be worth several somethings. |
|  Image Credits: Nothing |
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| In an exclusive interview with TechCrunch Hardware Editor Brian Heater, Nothing Founder Carl Pei discussed the product and design principles underpinning Ear (1), a set of US$99/â¬99/£99 wireless earbuds that will hit the market later this month. “Weâre starting with smart devices,” said Pei. “Ear (1) is our first device. I think it has good potential to gain some traction.” Despite Apple’s market share and the number of players already competing in the space, “weâve just focused on being ourselves,” said Nothing’s founder, who also shared initial marketing plans and discussed the inherent tensions involved with manufacturing consumer hardware. “Everything is a trade-off. Like if you pursue this design, that has a ton of implications. Battery life has ton of implications on size and on cost. The materials you use have implications on cost. Everything has an implication on timeline. Itâs like 4D chess in terms of trade-offs.” Read the full interview on Extra Crunch. (Extra Crunch is our membership program, which helps founders and startup teams get ahead. You can sign up here.) Read More |
|  Image Credits: TechCrunch |
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Big Tech Inc. We got through most of the Big Tech news in our Top Three today, but thereâs still a bit more for your enjoyment: |
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| Are you all caught up on last weekâs coverage of growth marketing? If not, read it here. As usual, if you have a recommendation of a growth marketer we should know about, fill out the survey here. Read More |
|  Image Credits: SEAN GLADWELL / Getty Images |
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