Tuesday, February 7, 2023

Global VC firm Partech reaches first close of largest African fund at €245 million

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By Christine Hall and Haje Jan Kamps

Tuesday, February 07, 2023

What's up, Crunchy readers!

True crime has its grip on us all, and Lorenzo's review of “Tracers in the Dark” is fascinating. In the book, the author covers how cops go after cybercriminals, and it shows that there is hope in stopping drug dealers, dark web market kingpins and child abusers. And it's all thanks to the immutable, persistent nature of the Bitcoin blockchain, the perfect place to follow the money.

Our Black history month mention of the day is Ijeoma Oluo's “So You Want to Talk About Race,” which Haje read last year and which served as a bit of an eye-opener to all the things he thought he knew but really didn't about how race shows up, ranging from police brutality and cultural appropriation to the model minority myth. For white people, it's 100% worth a read before you start asking dumb and embarrassing questions to your people-of-color friends.

Christine and Haje

 image

Image Credits: wragg / Getty Images

The TechCrunch Top 3

  • First close is the best close: Global venture capital firm Partech made a first close on its new fund of €245 million, which makes it the largest Africa-focused fund. Tage writes that "overwhelming interest from LPs meant Partech Africa II surpassed what was initially set for the entire fund at first close."
  • Bing, not Chanandler Bong: Frederic writes that Microsoft is celebrating "a new day of search" by launching the new Bing, complete with ChatGPT.
  • Capture this: Drone imagery firm DroneBase is now Zeitview. It also landed $55 million to continue developing its air and ground data capture technology, Kyle reports.

Startups and VC

You wait for ages for a real-world application of AI image generation, and then suddenly, two come along at once. Brian writes about how FRIDA's robot arm attempts to bring DALL-E-style AI art to real-world canvases, and Haje covers how 3D laser cutting company Glowforge adds AI image generation to its software package.

Almost a year ago to the day, the 50-year-old investing powerhouse Sequoia Capital announced that it had reorganized itself around a singular, permanent structure, Connie reports. Now, thanks to an SEC form filed on Friday, we know how much is sitting in the Sequoia Capital Fund. And because we are sneaky capitalists doing it for the clicks. If you wanna know how much, you gotta read the article.

And we have five more for you, complete with a soundtrack that jackknifes between a number of unlikely genres:

Cybersecurity teams, beware: The defender's dilemma is a lie

The Defender’s Dilemma is one of cybersecurity’s touchstones: “Defenders have to be right every time. Attackers only need to be right once.”

It may sound authentic, but David J. Bianco, a staff security strategist at Splunk, says it’s actually a false narrative that leaves systems less secure.

“Defenders rightly expect attackers to lie and cheat to achieve their goals, but sometimes we forget that lying and cheating can work both ways.”

Three more from the TC+ team:

TechCrunch+ is our membership program that helps founders and startup teams get ahead of the pack. You can sign up here. Use code "DC" for a 15% discount on an annual subscription!

Read More

Cybersecurity teams, beware: The defender's dilemma is a lie image

Image Credits: A. Martin UW Photography / Getty Images

Big Tech Inc.

What's your status? Well, if you're a WhatsApp user, you can now give a voice status update, Jagmeet writes. Each voice note can be up to 30 seconds and then set as your status. So now people have a voice to go with your photo.

Today was all about the OnePlus smartphone: Brian gives you a rundown of the $699 OnePlus 11, which arrives February 16, and he also looks at some of OnePlus’ additional products like a tablet and mechanical keyboard. Then Ivan writes about the Buds Pro 2, which will run you a cool $179 but has improved sound and noise cancellation.

And we have five more for you:

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Friday, February 3, 2023

Apple says it earned $20.8B from 935M subscriptions last fiscal quarter

TechCrunch Newsletter
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The Daily Crunch logo

By Christine Hall and Haje Jan Kamps

Friday, February 03, 2023

Friday, cha cha cha! Fri-day! Cha cha cha! We're doing a tiny, joyous, two-person conga line around our virtual Daily Crunch editorial Zoom meeting to celebrate the arrival of the first weekend in February. Yes, it looks ridiculous. No, we couldn't care less even if we took every ounce we had and poured into less-caring.

Couple of quick ones for startups: If you're going to MWC, we want to hear from you, and we want your votes for the TechCrunch Early Stage fireside chats, breakout sessions and roundtable discussions!

And for today's Black History Month recommendation, we suggest Michelle Alexander’s The New Jim Crow. It's an extraordinary read that, when it was published a decade ago, reignited the desire for criminal justice reform and is still as poignant and relevant today. — Christine and Haje

The TechCrunch Top 3

  • The Big Apple of subscriber bases: Apple may have missed its revenue target (see the Big Tech section) for its fiscal first quarter, but the consumer tech giant is poppin' bottles and tootin’ horns after announcing it now has 935 million paid subscriptions across all of its offerings. Ivan has more.
  • Who's at the door?: Christine got the scoop on Jokr's new funding round. The grocery delivery company secured around $50 million to give it a bump in valuation, up to $1.3 billion now. Jokr plans to use that funding to double down on its service in Brazil.
  • A tall order for some shorts: YouTube's persistence of getting everyone to watch shorts has paid off: Google says YouTube Shorts crossed 50 billion daily views, Ivan reports.

Startups and VC

TechCrunch Live is back, and Matt is thrilled to have hosted this conversation with Sameer Shariff, CEO and co-founder of Cambly, and Sarah Tavel, partner at Benchmark. During this hourlong event, you'll hear how Cambly used a failed Series A fundraise to force the company into a cash-positive position. Of course, once the company didn't need outside capital, it was suddenly available, and the company raised its next two rounds of funding.

And we have five more for you:

Pitch Deck Teardown: Laoshi's $570K angel deck

The founders of Laoshi raised a $570,000 angel round to scale up their app, which helps users learn to read and write in Chinese.

To help other very early-stage founders, they shared 15 slides from their deck:

  • Cover slide
  • Problem slide
  • Market slide
  • Solution slide
  • Competition slide
  • Road map slide
  • Team slide
  • Teacher growth slide
  • Teacher retention slide
  • Summary slide
  • "Contact us" slide
  • Appendices cover slide
  •  Appendix I: Viral effect slide
  •  Appendix II: Business model slide
  •  Appendix III: "The ask" slide

Three more from the TC+ team:

TechCrunch+ is our membership program that helps founders and startup teams get ahead of the pack. You can sign up here. Use code "DC" for a 15% discount on an annual subscription!

Read More

Pitch Deck Teardown: Laoshi's $570K angel deck image

Image Credits: Laoshi

Big Tech Inc.

For all you "Seinfeld" fans out there, Amanda came upon this gem on Twitch, the “Nothing, Forever" AI 'Seinfeld' spoof, which she notes, "We've all seen far too many AI-generated gimmicks, but the AI isn't what's most interesting about "Nothing, Forever." It's the community that's gathered around the stream, making the project feel like this generation's "Twitch Plays Pokémon." Enjoy!

Our team was on earnings overload, and now we have a nice collection of insights from Ford, Apple and Amazon:

Now here's some non-earnings items for your Friday enjoyment:

Read more stories on TechCrunch.com

Newest Jobs from Crunchboard

See more jobs on CrunchBoard

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

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