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Happy Friday Eve, it is Thursday, May 12. You can catch all of the stories written by the team here. I fear you will know who the funny one is now that Haje is enjoying a couple of days off. See you tomorrow!
The TechCrunch Top 3
Twitter execs depart: The Twitter saga entered a new chapter today, albeit not a surprising one given what’s going on: Some of its key executives, including GM of Consumer Kayvon Beykpour and Revenue Product Lead Bruce Falck, were told by current CEO Parag Agrawal that their services were no longer needed. We’re keeping an eye on this — there will probably be more.
SoftBank slowdown: Just as we saw with Tiger Global yesterday, as one story commenter put it, “The pandemic really is making us re-evaluate every decision.” Case in point, SoftBank said it may cut investments into startups by more than a half in its upcoming fiscal year.
Terra back on track: Jacquelyn continues to keep up with the latest on TerraUSD, reporting that Terraform Labs resumed its blockchain production after halting for a bit. This follows the “Terra ecosystem’s meltdown this week” that took down its stablecoin, UST, and the rest of the cryptocurrency market. Meanwhile, Alex dove into how great crypto startup venture capital investments were going in the first quarter, before “everything went to hell,” as he put it. Indeed, “crypto winter is coming,” and if you’d like to know more, check out today’s Chain Reaction podcast.
Startups and VC
Let’s start with some M&A news, shall we? After outsourcing its digital identity verification, Checkout.com decided to bring that function in-house with the acquisition of Ubble. Though terms of the deal were not disclosed, Checkout.com can certainly afford it after grabbing $1 billion in funding in January. Meanwhile, desktop 3D printing firms MakerBot and Ultimaker decided to make it official, tying the knot in a merger that will spin out MakerBot from parent company Stratasys. And across the pond, Nexi scooped up Orderbird, a startup providing point-of-sale services to restaurants and other hospitality companies — a big market right now.
Show me the money: While offering financial services is hot in Latin America, payments prove to be where it’s at in Africa. Interswitch took in a big round today as it looks to expand across the continent.
Calling all customers: Customer service requests came fast and furious as most shopping turned online over the past two years. Implementing tools to help was not something small businesses were able to do because of the complexity of adding a tech layer. That’s where Tidio comes in. Its automated customer service offering can get companies up and running quickly, take on repetitive tasks, and keep up with customers that call a lot.
Brazilian fintech now valued at $1.5 billion: Helping businesses offer their own financial services continues to be hot, hot, hot in Latin America. Dock is the latest company to see the fruits of its labor, raising $110 million. It now operates over 65 million active accounts.
When and how to hire your startup’s first growth marketer
When a company reaches product-market fit and finds its target audience, it signals that hiring a growth marketer will enable your efforts to be scaled much faster than without one.
In a post titled "How to identify the right kind of growth hire, which traits to look for, and how to set clear expectations and milestones once they're on board", Martinez explains how to identify the right kind of growth hire, which traits to look for, and how to
Priority tasks should include setting up a growth tech stack, creating a testing road map to find the most efficient growth levers, and robust creative and copy testing in the first 90 days.
Techcrunch+ helps founders and startup teams get ahead. You can sign up here.
When and how to hire your startup’s first growth marketer
Big Tech Inc.
Uber shareholders voted against a proposal that would have required the ride-hailing company to fully disclose its direct and indirect lobbying activities and expenditures, according to a regulator...Gusto, an HR technology unicorn worth nearly $10 billion, has raised an extension to its 2021-era Series E funding round. That funding event included $175 million in primary capital, a tranche of s...Four U.S. representatives signed letters to the CEOs of Meta, TikTok, YouTube and Twitter urging them to archive any content uploaded to their platforms that could be used as evidence of Russian wa...Section4, an upskilling startup launched by prominent NYU professor Scott Galloway, has laid off a quarter of staff sources say. The layoffs, which occurred last week, affected employees across all...Hello and welcome back to the Chain Reaction podcast, where we unpack and explain the latest crypto news, drama and trends, breaking it down block by block for the crypto curious. You’ve prob...After his departure from Facebook in November, many crypto industry insiders speculated where long-time executive David Marcus would land. Today, the former Messenger boss and Paypal executive offe...During the pandemic especially, it’s become overwhelming for small- and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) to answer all of their customer service requests. A Freshworks survey found that compani...The halt means no new blocks are being generated on the blockchain network after its block height of 7603700, and holders can’t move their Terra assets until the blockchain is unfrozen.
Well, all you have to do is sign up to volunteer for work exchange at TC Sessions: Mobility on May 17, 18 and 19, and not only will you get a behind-the-scenes look at how TechCrunch events run, yo...TechCrunch Live records, well, live every Wednesday at noon Pacific, and it’s a great time. The events are free, and is available to watch on Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter. However, if you w...Amazon is introducing two new features for its “Alexa Together” elder care subscription service. The subscription expands on Amazon’s existing product Alexa Care Hub and includes an eme...Climate-change warriors heed this call! If you want to demo your climate tech at TC Sessions: Climate 2022 on June 14 at UC Berkeley, time is running out. We have only two — count ‘em two — Startup...Mark Zuckerberg took to his personal Facebook page today to show off a demo of the company’s unreleased “high-end” VR headset. The physical product, which for now is code-named Pr...Animoca Brands has grown into one of the biggest firms in the metaverse, play-to-earn gaming and NFT worlds, but it wants to enter a new sector: education.
Twitter GM of Consumer, Keyvon Beykpour, announced today he will be leaving the company after seven years. Beykpour first joined the social media platform by way of its acquisition of Periscope, wh...fter all the big hardware and software announcements during the I/O 2022 keynote presentation, today Google is sharing some updates for cars with Android Auto.
