Thursday, September 1, 2022

Ring wants to upgrade your apartment’s intercom system

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By Christine Hall and Haje Jan Kamps

Thursday, September 01, 2022

Today, Haje is particularly psyched that he was able to talk the TechCrunch Plus team into letting him publish one of his Pitch Deck Teardowns without the paywall. If you're not a TC+ subscriber, and you're curious what a critique of a $65 million funding round at a $1.7 billion valuation looks like, it's your lucky day. In addition to the freebie, it may be a particularly good time to subscribe, though, because we're running a Labor Day sale on annual TC+ memberships.

We're also going to Minneapolis soon, and we just published the agenda for the free TechCrunch virtual event that should totally have been called “All Eyez on Mi(nnesota).” With apologies to Tupac.

Happy rest-of-your-Thursday, and know that Friday is so close we can almost perceive the sweet stench of a long Labor Day weekend. Aaaaaah. — Christine and Haje

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Image Credits: Ring

The TechCrunch Top 3

  • When the doorbell beckons: Ring has a shiny new feature called Ring Intercom, designed to pair with existing apartment intercom systems. Brian has more.
  • Valuation bump: Fintech fraud fighter Alloy is now worth $1.55 billion after banking $52 million in new funding, Mary Ann reports.
  • Sharing is caring: Kyle spoke to Slack executive Steve Wood about the company's new automation features that make workflows more shareable and discoverable by other Slack users, and where the company goes from here.

Startups and VC

Reddit's acquisition spree is continuing this morning with news that the company is bringing the audience contextualization company Spiketrap's technology in-house. Deal terms were not disclosed, but Reddit says Spiketrap's AI-powered contextual analysis and tools will help Reddit to improve in areas like ad quality scoring and will boost prediction models for powering auto-bidding, Sarah reports.

A few more, now with Moar Emoji!

9 strategies that will help you overcome your fear of fundraising

Pleasure cruises usually start with a ship-wide safety briefing where passengers put on life vests and learn what to do in an emergency.

Similarly, there’s no reason to be afraid to raise money to start a new venture, but founders should have a healthy respect for a process that’s not completely under their control.

“Any change is an opportunity to create leverage, and a downturn is no exception,” writes Masha Bucher, founder and general partner of early-stage VC firm Day One Ventures.

In this TC+ post, she discusses the current environment and shares “actionable tips for closing pre-seed to Series B rounds.”

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

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9 strategies that will help you overcome your fear of fundraising image

Image Credits: Vicki Jauron, Babylon and Beyond Photography / Getty Images

Big Tech Inc.

Yesterday, we reported on Snap laying off 20% of its workforce, which apparently included the entire Zenly team. Today we enjoyed Paul's and Romain's second-day look at what happened to the social mapping app, which was acquired by Snap in 2017, and perhaps to answer the bigger question of: "Zenly is still hugely popular, so why's Snap shutting it down?"

  • Yo ho, yo ho, it's a commerce life for me: Ivan has the skinny on news that Disney+ is looking to have an in-app commerce feature that will enable users to scan a QR code and be taken to a site with branded goods.
  • Taking a stand: A group of Googlers continues to speak out against their employer about the $1.2 billion Project Nimbus contract and the fear that Google's technology will add to the digital surveillance in occupied Palestinian territories, Amanda reports.
  • Edit yourself: Later this month, Twitter Blue subscribers will be among the first to get a chance to try out Twitter's new feature that will enable them to edit their tweets, Ivan writes.
  • Price tag: Instacart is acquiring Eversight, an AI-powered pricing and promotions company. Aisha writes that this pairing will "give retailers and CPG brands access to new individualized and customized pricing tools."
  • To the moon: Or really to the International Space Station. NASA is paying $1.4 billion to SpaceX in exchange for five more astronaut transportation flights, Aria writes.

Read more stories on TechCrunch.com

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Wednesday, August 31, 2022

Snap lays off one-fifth of its workforce after missing revenue and growth targets

TechCrunch Newsletter
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By Christine Hall and Haje Jan Kamps

Wednesday, August 31, 2022

Midweek? More like mid-weak! Okay, terrible pun, but we're a little low energy in this heat wave today, so it kinda made sense.

Oh! And good news, btw, we're offering 15% off Disrupt tickets (excluding online or expo tickets) for you, our trusty Daily Crunch readers. Use promo code “DC” to claim your discount!

See you tomorrow!  — Christine and Haje

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Image Credits: TechCrunch

The TechCrunch Top 3

  • Slumdog $5-illonnaire: Landa is the latest startup to attract venture capital, in this case $33 million, to democratize real estate ownership, Mary Ann writes. Its approach enables people to invest in the real estate sector, which is known for providing generational wealth, but in a less expensive, more fractional way, and in some cases, for as little as $5 initially.
  • Snap, crackle and . . . fizzle: Despite the myriad of news and new revenue streams we've reported about Snap right here in this newsletter, Evan Spiegel said the words no tech employee wants to hear right now: "restructuring our business." Amanda reports that this unfortunately means cutting 20% of staff.
  • Obstacles abroad: Amazon faces some tough competition in India, and Manish reports that has presented some challenges in the e-commerce giant's ability to gain a more prominent foothold in the country.

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Startups and VC

This week, Haje went deep with a founder who's building digital license plates. He mused that building an easy-to-copy hardware product in an incredibly tightly regulated industry where winner-takes-all would be an utter nightmare, but when it works, it works, and it's fascinating to see Reviver build a company, one license plate at the time.

Populus, the San Francisco–based transportation data startup, got its start as shared scooter mania took hold and cities tried to make sense of how infrastructure was being used by fleets of tiny vehicles. Now, Populus co-founder and CEO Regina Clewlow is repositioning the company to take advantage of another hot opportunity: curbs and congestion, Rebecca writes. It's a really good read from the TechCrunch transportation desk with an undertone of “the power of great pivots.”

Raisin' money, raisin' hell:

Crafting a XaaS customer success strategy that drives growth

Giving users better service than they expected could literally save a software startup. In one study, companies that spent 10% of yearly revenue on customer success attained peak net recurring revenue.

“Companies mostly deploy two or more customer success archetypes,” according to TC+ contributors Rachel Parrinello and John Stamos. “They usually vary by customer segment, business versus technical focus and sales motion focus: adopt, renew, upsell and cross-sell.”

If you’re interested in optimizing revenue through CS, read the rest for a full overview of job design methodology, because “companies should not design their customer success roles in a vacuum.”

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

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Crafting a XaaS customer success strategy that drives growth image

Image Credits: THEPALMER / Getty Images

Big Tech Inc.

Social media and privacy don't often go hand in hand, especially when children can see a lot on the internet already. Twitter got caught up in this when it reportedly tried to monetize adult content in an effort to compete with OnlyFans. It later scrapped the program when it was found that its system couldn't "detect child sexual abuse material and non-consensual nudity at scale," Amanda writes. Meanwhile, California lawmakers wasted no time moving ahead to put in place statewide online privacy protections for children where there are none at the federal level, Taylor reports.

  • Stepping on the gas, er, EV pedal: Toyota is accelerating its investment in U.S. electric vehicles, and will park some $3.8 billion into that initiative, up from an initial $1.3 billion, Jaclyn writes.
  • Cashing in on NFTs: Event organizers working with Ticketmaster can now issue NFTs tied to tickets on Flow, Ivan reports.
  • It's almost fall and that means another Apple event: Brian has the skinny on all the things you should know about Apple's iPhone 14 event on September 7.
  • New satellite on the block: Royal Caribbean is going "all-in on satellite service," and will outfit its fleet of ships with Starlink internet, Devin writes.

Read more stories on TechCrunch.com

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