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On Tuesday, March 15, 2022, you will be able to see Daily Crunch. We have done it. We made it through the entire first quarter. The final two weeks are when we will enter the second real period. The fact that we are close to the end of March means that Early Stage is about to start. I cannot wait. I'm looking forward to Q1 earnings as well.
The TechCrunch Top 3 4
All Raise hires new CEO: A nonprofit focused on “increasing diversity within venture capital deals and decision-makers” per our reporting, All Raise now has a new boss. Mandela Schumacher-Hodge Dixon comes into the role after running Founder Gym, which helped train underrepresented founders around the world.
Challenges in China: The technology landscape in China is being squeezed as the country’s government continues a regulatory barrage, COVID policies lock down key cities, and potential delisting looming over the country’s U.S.-listed companies. Markets have reacted negatively to the uncertainty.
The venture result: The tough market is starting to show up in venture capital results, early data indicates. Tracking the Chinese venture capital market, once a challenger for the global top slot, was an interesting adventure last year as VCs kept writing checks despite more government oversight. Now, however, the numbers could be shifting. And not for the better.
How European startups are aiding Ukrainian refugees: While the world’s governments grapple with how to blunt and push back the Russian invasion of Ukraine, startups and more mature tech companies in Europe are stepping up with a host of efforts to ameliorate human suffering. TechCrunch has a running list of who is doing what that is worth reading.
Startups and VC
What happened to the coin? The NFT market appeared to be slowing last week. There is still interest in the space despite the price movements. The parent company of MetaMast just raised $7 billion, and the team that was working on the project at Facebook just raised a mint. A new blockchain is not something built atop an existing network.
There is an essay on TechCrunch about the regulation of consumer lending that is worth reading. The concept of laggy regulation in the face of rapid innovation is never something to ignore.
Astra manages to ad astra: Flying to space is a pretty binary activity. You either make it and deliver whatever it is you were tasked with transporting, or you don’t, and everyone watches your rocket fail on YouTube. In good news for the burgeoning space transit game, “space startup-turned-public-company Astra reached orbit for a second time, in its debut mission for new customer Spaceflight Inc.,” TechCrunch reports. (I’m keeping Astra in the startup section for now as it is still a startup despite public-company status, just as Databricks is a public company despite private-company status.)
Enterprise software is still big business: Sure, VCs want to fund crypto exchanges and whatnot, but the work of building software for large companies is still ticking along. Evidence of that can be found today in Run:ai raising a $75 million round. Tiger and Insight Partners led the investment, giving the AI workload orchestrator a huge capital base from which to grow.
Employee engagement is also big business: Sticking to the enterprise theme for a moment, Staffbase just raised a huge $115 million round at a $1.1 billion valuation, TechCrunch reports. The company’s software “helps internal teams craft, send out and measure the impact of their communications with their organizations,” we write.
Plaid for commerce? Plaid became famous for building APIs to help knit the world of fintech together. TechCrunch reckons that Rutter is running a similar playbook, but for e-commerce. And after raising a $1.5 million round last year, the company is back in 2022 with a $27 million Series A.
Battery-powered, island-hopping cargo ships: Here’s a fun one. FleetZero wants to shake up the carbon-heavy and generally old-fashioned global blue-water shipping world with electric boats, using smaller ports and battery swapping. Um, hell yeah?
Insurtech isn’t dead: Yes, the value of many insurtech startups has fallen in recent quarters, but that doesn’t mean that the sector is kaput. A good example is the latest Cowbell Cyber round, worth $100 million, to deliver cyber insurance to SMEs. Given the deluge of ransomware around the world, we doubt that Cowbell will lack for TAM.
There was more. We have more reporting on the world of e- commerce aggregation, as well as a $50 million raise for its infant formula venture.
How to pitch me: 4 VCs share what they’re looking for in March 2022
It is not possible to tell you which deals VCs are looking for at the moment or how they prefer to be approached.
To learn more about where top VCs are looking for opportunities, we asked the following investors.
Christine Choi, partner, M13
Arvind Gupta, partner, Mayfield Fund
Mike Ghaffary, general partner, Canvas Ventures
Sarah Kunst, managing director, Cleo Capital
Techcrunch+ helps founders and startup teams get ahead. You can sign up here.
How to pitch me: 4 VCs share what they’re looking for in March 2022
Big Tech Inc.
The company is making real honey with precision fermentation and plant science.
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Hello friends and welcome to Daily Crunch, bringing you the most important startup, tech and venture capital news in a single package.
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