Every day at 3 p.m., you'll get a rundown of the biggest and most important stories from TechCrunch. You can subscribe here.
On Thursday, March 17, 2022, you will be able to read Daily Crunch. We have an absolute mountain of news to climb today, so we are going to get to work with alacrity. The speaker lineup for the Early Stage event is looking more and more stacked. Can't wait to see everyone!
The TechCrunch Top 3
More capital for instant delivery: After a flurry of 2021 rounds, the venture market for instant delivery companies is still active. Getir, an Indian instant-delivery company, just raised a $768 million Series E, pushing its valuation to nearly $12 billion. Mubadala Investment Company led the round.
How one city is diversifying its startup market: The U.S. venture market is often considered to be its two main coasts. But in the country’s huge middle, startups are being built and funded at record pace. And Chicago, one of the most important American metropolises, is funding more and more underrepresented founders at the seed and angel stages. We dug into how that change is happening.
Paradigm backs Ethereum scaler Optimism: The Ethereum blockchain has a lot to like about it. You can program it and use it for all sorts of things. But it’s also expensive to use at times, with transaction fees jumping up and down. So, many companies are building tech to make Ethereum scale. Optimism is one such company, and it just raised a $150 million Series B at a valuation north of $1 billion.
Startups and VC
Reface removes itself from the Russian market: When Russia invaded Ukraine, many companies immediately yanked their services from its borders. Reface, a Ukrainian app, did not, instead opting to “use its app as a conduit to circumvent the Kremlin’s media censorship,” TechCrunch writes. However, that seems to have backfired a little, and now the company is over it — and pulling out.
Tile builds anti-stalking tech into its platform: Apple and Tile have built ways for users to better track their devices. But both companies also managed to create situations in which malefactors could abuse their tech to stalk people. Tile has now updated its tech to combat the situation, as Apple has as well.
Forget Peloton; Hydrow is still raising: You might think that in the wake of Peloton’s meltdown, investors would be over putting capital into at-home exercise equipment. Nope. Hydrow – the aptly named at-home erging machine – just raised $55 million. So if you are into at-home rowing, good news! I have done both erging and on-river rowing, and am arse at both, so I can’t really comment on the quality of the Hydrow itself, but can confirm that it is a more full-body exercise than simply cycling.
A new social calendar: Hybridizing calendars and the to-do space, with a healthy mix of team focus, Amie is a neat idea. Given what portion of the world lives in either Google Calendar or Outlook, there is probably still plenty of TAM out there for Amie to tackle, despite stiff startup competition.
Today’s enterprise deal: Look, I can’t really improve on what Ron Miller wrote here, so let’s just quote the man, yeah? “Upstash, an early-stage startup, is building a serverless data platform for developers of data-intensive applications using a consumption-based pricing model, which should help drive down prices,” he reported. Excellent. Upstash just closed $1.9 million from Mango Capital, among others.
TikTok Stories: Some ideas are just good, in that consumers love them. Stories, or series updates from particular creators that are designed to be more ephemeral than regular posts, are one such thing. And TikTok, after experimenting with the model, is doing more work with its stories product.
Profishop raises from Tiger: Flush with $35 million in new capital, Profishop is building in the logistics space. In particular, it’s working on “just in time” B2B deliveries for business and industrial products. It’s a German company that now operates in 13 markets. Expect that number to expand now that it has fresh funds.
The artist formerly known as Square backs Kyash: Now called Block, the Jack Dorsey consumer and business fintech giant has taken part in a $41.7 million round of Kyash, a Japanese mobile financial app. It appears that this is Block’s “first investment in an Asia-based company,” TechCrunch reports.
Tortoise co-founder Dmitry Shevelenko: ‘You can’t do too many things at the same time’
The image was created by Bryce Durbin.
A startup that makes multiple pivots might look like it lacks direction from the outside.
Changing course is usually the smartest bet because it allows founding teams to leverage new technology and adapt to changing market conditions.
Tortoise co-founder Dmitry Shevelenko was interviewed by Rebecca Bellan about his company's transition from a hardware-as-a-service model to a take-rate scheme that gives it 10% of any sales made from its card payment.
Shevelenko says that the most important thing with agility is being able to admit you're wrong or that you've learned new information.
Techcrunch+ helps founders and startup teams get ahead. You can sign up here.
Tortoise co-founder Dmitry Shevelenko: ‘You can’t do too many things at the same time’
Big Tech Inc.
Amazon’s MGM deal completes: So much for rising antitrust activity blocking major deals. Amazon’s $8.5 billion purchase of movie studio MGM has completed, bringing more media power inside the e-commerce and cloud-computing giant. Sure, it may seem slightly odd that AWS also owns a movie studio, but with more and more digital goods landing inside of the company’s Prime subscription, perhaps the deal makes sense.
Maserati plans V-6 of electric cars: The boom in electric cars is reaching all manufacturers, it seems, including higher-end sportscar types like Maserati. The Italian car company plans on releasing a half-dozen electric cars by 2025, TechCrunch reports.
TechCrunch reviews new Apple products: If you were hungering after Apple’s new Mac Studio computer, good news. Our review is out. And we also chatted with Apple execs about the new computer and its partner monitor, the latter of which is getting far more mixed reviews than the machine it plugs into.
Meta is testing ways for brands to have more control over ad placement, and the search company has built a tool to help companies manage deliveries.
Recruiting a winning engineering team can be intimidating, especially for first-time and non-technical founders.
PayPal is expanding its services to allow its users to send money to Ukrainians, the company announced on Thursday. Prior to this expansion, users in Ukraine could only use PayPal to send money out...Flickr isn’t very good at making money, but as the old adage goes, sex sells. So, in an attempt to draw in more paying subscribers, Flickr changed its content guidelines to only allow Flickr ...If you were to accidentally drop the eye sensor developed by Injectsense you’d have little chance of finding it. Ariel Cao, the founder and CEO, admits as much. But once it’s been implanted into th...The billions raised by eVTOL companies last year mean one thing for 2022 — massive growth. These trends will influence how entrepreneurs and investors participate in the burgeoning eVTOL ecosystem....The home fitness craze has, predictably, died down somewhat since the height of pandemic-fueled buying sprees. Category leader Peloton is smarting from gym reopenings (among lots of other things) i...Meta, formerly known as Facebook, says it will begin testing new content tools designed to give advertisers control over where their ads are shown on Facebook and Instagram feeds, the company annou...After a bullied teen died by suicide, a grieving mother last year sued the platform where the abuse had taken place — Snapchat — for not doing enough to protect its younger users. Anoth...Android development these days runs on a monthly cadence, so it’s no surprise that about a month after Google announced the first developer preview of Android 13 (code-named “Tiramisu,&...Lost-item tracker and AirTag competitor Tile is today introducing its first anti-stalking safety feature, called “Scan and Secure.” The technology was first announced in October with a ...Meet Amie, a startup working on a brand new productivity app for both individuals and teams. The company is unveiling its app this week and users can sign up to the waitlist. Amie is a well-designe...Throughout the most recent crypto bull run, plenty of new crypto users have interacted with the Ethereum network for the first time and have been surprised to find sluggish, expensive transactions....Google’s Threat Analysis Group has observed a financially motivated threat actor working as an intermediary for the Russian hackers, including the Conti ransomware gang. The group, which Google ref...While mainstream social networks like Facebook and Instagram have had their services blocked by state authorities in Russia in recent days, as the Kremlin seeks total control of the narrative aroun...Maserati plans to launch a battery-electric version for each model in its portfolio by 2025 and phase out gas engines by the end of the decade, making it the latest to join the long list of marques...
Stories: Some ideas are just good, in that consumers love them. Stories, or series updates from particular creators that are designed to be more ephemeral than regular posts, are one such thing. And TikTok, after experimenting with the model, is doing more work with its stories product.
