Sunday, August 7, 2022

Kurtosis raises $20M Series A to give web3 developers 'a place to play around'

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By Christine Hall

Thursday, August 04, 2022

Haje and I are swapping places for the next two days while he gets some much-needed rest. While he's away, please enjoy his latest Pitch Deck Teardown on Glambook. In the meantime, TechCrunch Disrupt is coming closer: Meet the final five Disrupt Audience Choice roundtable winners, and if you are a student, enter our video competition for a chance to win a free pass.

And don’t forget, applications close tomorrow for Startup Battlefield 200! Apply today to join Startup Battlefield 200 for the chance to exhibit your startup for free at TechCrunch Disrupt this October and win the $100,000 equity-free prize. Applications close August 5. Be sure to get your applications in by tomorrow! Apply today.

See you tomorrow! — Christine

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Image Credits: Przemyslaw Klos / EyeEm / Getty Images

The TechCrunch Top 3

  • Tooling around: Two years ago, two former Palantir engineers started Kurtosis, a crypto-focused developer tool system, and have now raised $20 million in fresh funding to hire a team to get a new product out in the next year, Jacquelyn reports.
  • Strapping on some capital: Argentine fintech Geopagos leaves the bootstrap life behind as it takes in $35 million in new capital to help businesses launch their own financial services products, Mary Ann writes.
  • 'Snap'ping into some share buybacks: Moves by Snap and Airbnb to buy back shares amid slower growth has Alex raising his eyebrows and looking under the hood to see what's going on.

Cars Are Changing - How Does Lidar Help Automakers Evolve?

Sponsored by Cepton

Safety should come hand-in-hand with autonomous driving. Lidar is fast becoming an essential auto part in future cars. Learn how usable, scalable lidar solutions can help automakers make safety the standard across all levels of autonomy.

Learn More

Startups and VC

Lots of startup news again today, so let's dig in. First, Natasha M brings us some additional layoff news from On Deck, which is cutting another third of its staff after cutting a quarter a few months ago. For those of you who can add fractions, that's a lot, right?

We enjoyed reading Becca's investor survey story, where she interviewed six first-time fund managers about their approach to weathering the downturn.

Also, buy now, pay later is still more prevalent in the world of consumers (see Anita's funding story on Halliday), but businesses want in on the fun, too. That's where Kontempo comes in with $30 million and its approach to enabling sales teams to approve credit, Kyle reports.

From NDA to LOI: What really happens when your startup is being acquired?

Last week, VP and managing director of Dell Technologies Capital Yair Snir shared an article explaining why founders should plan on getting acquired, particularly since their odds of going public are so long.

In a follow-up, he takes readers inside the postacquisition integration period/process:

  • The shopping sprint
  • The road to an LOI
  • Bringing in bankers
  • Diving into due diligence
  • Defining "day one"
  • You've been acquired!

“While IPOs may get more headlines, a well-timed, well-planned acquisition can mean even larger opportunities for you, your team and the technologies you've built,” says Snir.

(TechCrunch+ is our membership program, which helps founders and startup teams get ahead. You can sign up here.)

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From NDA to LOI: What really happens when your startup is being acquired? image

Image Credits: Anna Minkina / Getty Images

Big Tech Inc.

When it comes to cryptocurrency, BlackRock is now saying, "Why beat them when you can join them?" Anita writes about the asset managing giant joining forces with Coinbase to provide its clients with access to crypto, initially Bitcoin. And speaking of Coinbase, Jacquelyn and Alex write for TechCrunch+ on why that partnership, and others Coinbase has, is delighting investors.

In the realm of social media, we enjoyed Amanda's story where she spoke with Patreon CEO Jack Conte on why Instagram and Facebook are on his list, and not in a good way. And Aisha tells us what's up with some new Clubhouse features.

Read more stories on TechCrunch.com

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Amazon to acquire iRobot in $1.7B all-cash deal

TechCrunch Newsletter
TechCrunch logo
The Daily Crunch logo

By Christine Hall

Friday, August 05, 2022

Happy Friday, y'all! Start your weekend off right with some delicious podcast morsels from Equity, Found and Chain Reaction. Also, time is ticking away on a $1,300 savings for TechCrunch Disrupt, so get on that before 11:59 p.m. PDT today. We hope you have a good weekend, see ya Monday!  — Christine

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Image Credits: Brian Heater

The TechCrunch Top 3

  • Double “ring” ceremony: Amazon and iRobot's relationship went to the next level today when the pair announced they were getting hitched, Brian reports. The robot vacuum mapping out your home now takes on a whole new meaning.
  • Double the layoffs: Natasha M noticed a trend among startup layoffs — that certain companies were making multiple announcements in quick succession — and got to work. She outlines what this means and why it's troubling. 
  • Double the entertainment: A pair-up is also happening in the streaming world. Fans of HBO Max and Discovery+ can cheer the merging of these services into one sometime next year, Ivan writes.

Cars Are Getting Smarter, but Is Safety Taking a Back Seat to Automation?

Sponsored by Cepton

Everyone's excited about the prospect of autonomous vehicles, but that excitement sometimes turns to frustration when automakers overpromise on autonomy and underdeliver on safety. What risk does this bring to the future of mobility?

Read More

Startups and VC

  • Sparking interest in electricity: Beacon Power got a jolt of new capital to improve electricity access for sub-Saharan African cities, Tage writes.
  • Making up: Internet privacy company DuckDuckGo and Microsoft are on friendlier terms now following a policy change that now includes third-party Microsoft tracking scripts, Natasha L reports.
  • Billion-dollar milestone: Moving over to TechCrunch+, Alex examines Databricks' news that it has reached $1 billion in annual run rate and what that means for its valuation.
  • Magnetic attraction: A new round of capital has Zenno Astronautics blasting off with its technology aimed at moving spacecraft by using electromagnets, Aria writes.
  • It's getting personal: Kenya's shift to protecting personal data will have some startup implications. Annie outlines what those might be.
  • More out-of-this-world action: LiveEO took in some new funding to further develop its big data approach to making raw geospatial data captured by satellites more usable, Ingrid reports.

How to run growth marketing during a recession

Last month, U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said the economy is "in a period of transition," on the grounds that "we have a very strong labor market. When you are creating almost 400,000 jobs a month, that is not a recession."

Today, we learned that the U.S. added 528,000 new jobs last month and the unemployment rate has fallen to 3.5%, but for many people in tech, this is a distinction without a difference: According to layoffs.fyi, 467 startups have let go of 64,518 employees so far in 2022.

Marketing can't cure everything that ails a company, but it is the easiest channel to make iterative changes that produce immediate results.

In his latest TechCrunch+ column, Jonathan Martinez says it's time to "re-forecast, re-prioritize and refine" strategies to move key growth metrics like ARPU and LTV.

Using multiple examples, he shares a few ways companies can project revenue using shorter time intervals, along with exercises to help fine-tune their marketing stack.

"If new channels and major experiments were in the picture, it's probably best to shelve those for when the markets recover," he advises.

(TechCrunch+ is our membership program, which helps founders and startup teams get ahead. You can sign up here.)

Read More

How to run growth marketing during a recession image

Image Credits: Mihaela Rosu / Getty Images

Big Tech Inc.

  • Elon Musk vs. Twitter, part 1,254: Twitter got a bit snarky, so says Ivan, in its response to Elon Musk's countersuit. It doesn't do it justice for me to lay it all out — it's better if you just take it all in yourself. Speaking of Twitter, Zack reports the social media giant fixed a pesky little security bug.
  • A seat at the table: India doesn't want to be left out of merger and acquisition deals, so it has crafted some antitrust proposals aimed at getting the country on par with other regions, Manish writes.
  • We're all “Super”: Well, under a hundred of us anyway. That's how many influencers are getting a sneak peek at Meta's new livestream platform, Super, Aisha reports.
  • Giddy up: Rebecca discusses five takeaways from Tesla's Cyber Roundup, also known as its annual shareholder meeting. Unfortunately, some of the attendees got blisters from their boots.

Read more stories on TechCrunch.com

Newest Jobs from Crunchboard

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Post your tech jobs and reach millions of TechCrunch readers for only $200 per month.

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