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There is a Wednesday in June. We enjoy living in the now, but we are excited about tomorrow. Tomorrow at noon, we will be talking with our immigration expert, who will share what the best visa is for bootstrapping a startup. Clicky to remind you now. If you like climate and the crispiness of our planet, we will have an online day for it tomorrow. Haje and Christine are happy.
Tune in for tomorrow’s Online Day at TC Sessions: Climate
The TechCrunch Top 3
Them’s fightin’ words: Dukaan, an Indian company that helps merchants set up e-commerce businesses, is challenging Shopify, even getting down and dirty on Twitter, Manish reports. The company’s aim is to speed up performance of websites, claiming Shopify’s speed and performance is causing merchants to lose out on sales if customers have to wait even a few additional seconds for sites to load.
Who knew market reports were so lucrative?: AlphaSense did. The global pandemic combined with market uncertainty gave the company, which is an analysis and business intel search engine, the boost it needed to go after $225 million in new funding, Ingrid writes. This not only gives AlphaSense a $1.7 billion valuation, but also proves that even in this counternarrative environment, it’s still good for some.
BNPL firms continue to duke it out: We can’t tell if consumers will be the winner as so many companies offer “buy now, pay later,” but it’s fun to see them all trying to one-up each other. The latest is PayPal, which is expanding its BNPL feature with a monthly pay service, Sarah tells us. This means that instead of taking 6 weeks to pay, users can now spread out payments over a 6-month to 24-month period. But be warned, customers can’t use it for a $30 T-shirt; purchases have to be between $199 and $10,000.
Startups and VC
In the world of startups, Haje made his debut on our Equity show, talking about how we are entering an era of creative accounting
Brian Shroder told employees that the company is in the best position to weather the downturn and emerge as the leading platform in the U.S.
Let's take a stroll in startup land and look through the lens of TechCrunch's reporting over the past 24 hours or so.
Vaporware, but not the bad kind: Puffco shows off a cool, pipe-looking cannabis vaporizer called the Proxy, with a $299 price tag, Matt reports.
Is it scary? Nah: GreyNoise is a self-styled “anti-threat intelligence” company that provides essentially a spam filter for internet threat alerts. It raised $15 million in funding, Carly reports.
Stacks of data, stacks of cash: DataStax hired Chet Kapoor as CEO in October 2019. That seems to have worked out — the company raised a $115 million round at a $1.6 billion valuation today, Ron reports.
Is it play or is it learning? Trick question — it’s both: Edtech company Pok Pok raises $3 million to continue to expand its digital play experiences, Aisha reports.
Making parking a walk in the park: Kyle reports that AI-powered parking platform Metropolis parks a $167 million truck full of money in its headquarters. Okay, maybe not literally, but that’d be kind of cool.
Nothing to see here: Smartphone hardware startup Nothing teases the design of its new phone ahead of next month’s launch, reports Natasha L.
Is consolidation on the horizon for Southeast Asia’s tech industry?
The image is called jayk7 and it opens in a new window.
In Southeast Asia, the super app business model pays dividends.
Offerings from Grab include grocery delivery, investment services, ride hailing and much more.
These companies are using acquisitions to enter new markets and gain an advantage over their competitors.
"As more tech companies look to the super app business model to retain users and increase monetization, we could expect more expansion and consolidation in the coming years."
Is consolidation on the horizon for Southeast Asia’s tech industry?
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Big Tech Inc.
The services in India and surrounding regions were affected by a Cloudflare outage. It wasn't known why it happened.
Did you hear anything from Apple's conference? Ivan wants you to know about Apple's new image cutout feature, which he believes is one of the most fun new features to come out of the operating system. The ability to cut out and lift the unwanted sections is something he likes. You can turn an image into a separate image that can be used in a message app.
Less than 2 years after its launch, the videos on the site have crossed 1.5 billion monthly users. This proves that it can compete with the likes of TikTok.
Did you have enough or are you thirsting for more?
This app is on fire: Lauren reports that Amazon revamped its Fire TV user interface to get rid of a lot of the text in favor of icons and a better navigation bar. Speaking of apps, Lauren also wrote about how Netflix’s real-life “Squid Game” competition intends to award the biggest cash prize and largest cast in reality TV history.
Another day, another layoff story: Wealthsimple, a Canadian fintech, is the latest to join the list of companies in that sector shedding employees, Mary Ann writes. With every article, we see that fast growth doesn’t always mean good growth.
A rose by any other name would smell as sweet: Aisha reports that Instacart joins other companies adding a “+” after its name. The food delivery giant renamed its subscription service Instacart+. (Did they get the idea from TechCrunch+? The world may never know.)
General Motors is investing more than $81 million to build the Cadillac Celestiq, the luxury electric hatchback, at the company’s Global Technical Center, the heart of the automaker’s e...Ford Motor is preparing for an economic downturn, despite steady consumer demand for new vehicles, according to the automaker’s chief financial officer. Even though Ford has seen record profi...If you’re a coach who’s ever thought, “Man, I wish there was a footwear-mounted performance tracker for my soccer team,” boy, do I have some excellent news for you. Playerma...“Women of color are the most founded, entrepreneurial demographic. They are just the least funded.”
On the face of it, data from the first year of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s project to track the safety of advanced driver assistance systems look terrible for Tesla. ...I’m a founder from Germany. Our customers are mainly U.S.-based, and we don’t plan to raise any capital from investors. What’s my best option for bootstrapping my startup in the U.S.?Puffco has long led the market with innovative cannabis vaporizers. The Puffco Peak Pro is easily one of the best e-rigs available, and the company just unveiled a new vape called the Proxy. It off...The technology is not “new,” but what has industry followers so excited is the potential for better-quality, more-cost-effective proteins compared to animal-based counterparts.
Canadian fintech giant Wealthsimple, which was valued at $4 billion as of last year, is laying off 159 people — or about 13% of its staff. The Toronto-based company has been a leader in the realm o...An analysis of recent changes in the market reveals four factors that could catalyze consolidation in Southeast Asia in the near future.
Out of all features Apple announced at its Worldwide Developer Conference (WWDC) last week, a new addition to Apple’s Visual Lookup system — a feature where you can “pick up” an o...Yesterday, Netflix greenlit “Squid Game: The Challenge,” a reality competition series based on the popular South Korean drama that, luckily, doesn’t have people killing each other “Hunger Games” st...We’re just about to wrap up a terrific in-person day at TC Sessions: Climate, but then we’re gearing up for plenty of online climate action and opportunity on June 16. Ready to connect with a globa...If you feel cloud and software stocks should not trade for less than their historical average, then you have cause to cheer. But is that a valid perspective?
Apple has signed a deal with Major League Soccer (MLS) that will see the company stream every MLS match for 10 years starting in 2023. The partnership will allow fans to watch all MLS, Leagues Cup ...Twitter’s expanding its suite of offerings for businesses with a new feature called Location Spotlight for professional accounts, the company announced on Tuesday. Now, local stores can displ...Hello and welcome back to Equity, a podcast about the business of startups, where we unpack the numbers and nuance behind the headlines. This is our Wednesday show, where we niche down to a single ...Instacart announced today that it’s introducing Instacart+, a revamped version of its subscription service previously called Instacart Express. The subscription service costs $9.99 per month ...When DataStax hired Chet Kapoor as CEO in October 2019, one of the first moves he made was to bring in his old pal Sam Ramji to be chief strategy officer, someone he had worked with for many years ...
