Daily Crunch - European privacy regulators fine Amazon $887M over targeted advertising practices

TechCrunch Newsletter

Friday, July 30, 2021 • By Alex Wilhelm

Hello and welcome to Daily Crunch for July 30, 2021. What a week, my friends. It was packed full of IPOs and earnings and startup news and new venture funds. And today was no exception. Before we get into it, however, I am happy to report that Calendly CEO Tope Awotona is coming to Disrupt. It's also the last day for early-bird passes, which are cheap. See you there! — Alex Read More

The TechCrunch Top 3 Elon vs. Tim Apple: Earnings season is usually replete with CEOs and other execs saying very few, usually boring things. That's because there are rules about what CEOs and other corporate leaders can say when their companies are public. Then there's Elon Musk, who took a poorly veiled potshot at Apple during Tesla's earnings call, and followed it up by tweeting that Apple's App Store cut is a tax on the internet. Game on. Why Robinhood went public: TechCrunch spoke with the company's CFO earlier this week about why this was the right time for the consumer trading service to go public. His answer? The company had done the work on exec talent, product work, safety and was ready. We also dug into why the company's debut has been a bit staid. Gopuff confirms $100M investment: The on-demand delivery company is now worth $15 billion after the latest investment, meaning that the so-called "instant" delivery space is now better funded than ever. Who put the capital in? A raft of crossover funds and other capital pools. This is a win for SoftBank's Vision Fund, mind.

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Startups/VC A good day for startups starting with the letter "Y:" Remember Yik Yak? And Yac? And Yo? Well, now keep your mind wrapped around Yat, a startup that has sold tens of millions of dollars in emoji strings that can represent your person or personality. I would mock this but I thought Bitmoji were dumb, so what do I know. Outvio closes $3M round for its white-label fulfillment service: Hailing from known startup hub Estonia, Outvio wants to build a SaaS business around its white-labelable "fulfillment solution for medium-sized and large online retailers in Spain and Estonia," TechCrunch reports. Frankly given how big the e-commerce game is getting, the idea behind Outvio is not a surprise. Let's see what it can get done with its new capital. Let's build stuff in space: That's what we presume Varda Space pitched when it was busy raising a $42 million Series A round. Why build stuff in space, which is hard to get to? Microgravity. Varda wants to have its first space-based manufacturing hub set up by 2023. My inner science fiction nerd is hyped. Porter wants to build a PaaS offering to make Kubernetes management better: The YC graduate just raised $1.5 million for its work to boot. In short, the founding team liked tech like Kubernetes, but didn't like managing it. So they built a tool to make that work easier. Why Porter raised a 2012-era seed round is beyond us, but the company can surely access more funds if things go well.

The best way to grow your tech career? Treat it like an app Many technical workers aren’t extremely career focused; on average, they’re paid more than other startup employees, and the most talented often get to work on projects that interest them personally. But the increasing demand for talent is offset by an ongoing shortage: Companies can’t hire developers and engineers fast enough, even though many still don’t see themselves as in-demand workers. “To put it bluntly, many developers and engineers stink at managing their own careers,” says Raj Yavatkar, CTO of Juniper Networks. Breaking away from traditional tech culture can be challenging, so Yavatkar recommends that developers and engineers “treat career advancement as you would a software project.” (Extra Crunch is our membership program, which helps founders and startup teams get ahead. You can sign up here.) Read More Image Credits: jayk7 / Getty Images

Big Tech Inc. Fires, the moon and a European fine? We have it all for you today in our big technology watchlist: 13 tons of Tesla batteries ignite: Batteries sometimes catch fire. Samsung learned this back in the day. Tesla is the most recent victim. A 13-ton Tesla Megapack caught fire in southeast Australia recently, which made the news. No one was hurt. Blue Origin won't get a moon rover deal: After offering a heavily discounted project to the U.S. government, Blue Origin won't get what it wanted after its request was turned down. A challenge to a SpaceX contract by Dynetics was also denied. So much for that. The EU fines Amazon its lunch money: Luxembourg's National Commission for Data Protection, or CNPD, has assessed a mammoth fine worth €746 million in metric, or $887 million in furlongs per fortnight. Amazon was not pleased with the GDPR-derived fine. But still, the company generates tens of billions of dollars in operating cash flow each year. How much does this fine really hurt? Airtel Africa's mobile money arm raises another $200M: As TechCrunch has noted, there's more and more capital flowing into all things digital in Africa. And startups aren't the only groups landing checks. African telco Airtel Africa's mobile money unit has raised lots of capital in recent weeks, including a fresh $200 million from an affiliate of the Qatar Investment Authority. Mastercard and TPG are also investors. Image Credits: Natasha Lomas

TechCrunch Experts: Growth Marketing We're reaching out to startup founders to tell us who they turn to when they want the most up-to-date growth marketing practices. Fill out the survey here. Read one of the testimonials we've received below! Marketer: Ascendant  Recommended by: Robyn Weatherley, Thirdfort Limited Testimonial: "Beyond their knowledge and experience (which is in abundance!), they have a deep understanding and appreciation for the unique challenges early-stage businesses have. They are in tune with the particular hurdles at various stages of growth and are able to adapt their working style dependent on those. They haven’t just helped us execute vital growth tactics, but they’ve helped us set up the framework to keep executing on those whether we are 5, 50 or 500 people. This is incredibly important as we scale and to demonstrate to future investors. They are also exceptional mentors and are able to offer real-world advice and work flexibly to suit the ever-changing nature of a high-growth early-stage business."

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Daily Crunch - Scarlett Johansson sues Disney, says streaming release of ‘Black Widow’ breaches contract

TechCrunch Newsletter

Thursday, July 29, 2021 • By Alex Wilhelm

Hello and welcome to Daily Crunch for July 29, 2021. Between the IPO cycle and earnings it has been quite the day. And Nikola's founder was indicted on three counts of fraud. It's busy! Let's get into it! — Alex Image Credits: Amy Sussman / Getty Images

The TechCrunch Top 3 (OK, four, but it's about Scarlett Johansson) Nikola founder indicted on fraud charges: From the you saw this coming files, former Nikola CEO and walking bottle of Mountain Dew Trevor Milton was indicted on three counts of fraud. Per the federal indictment unsealed by the U.S. attorney's office in Manhattan on Thursday, the former exec "engaged in a fraudulent scheme to deceive retail investors." Not a great day for SPACs, frankly. Microsoft may invest in hotel unicorn OYO: Here's an odd one. Microsoft, the U.S. software giant, may invest in OYO, the India-based hotels startup that raised capital from SoftBank's first Vision Fund. Why? Per our reporting, there may be some sort of cloud deal in the mix. Both parties are staying mum for now. The Latin American startup market is hitting its stride: On the back of an epic boom in venture investment, founders in Latin America are finally getting their due, investors told TechCrunch. Between locally sourced capital, external funds and economies in the region that are increasingly digitally enabled, it's a bullish time to build in the region. Scarlett Johansson files suit over Disney+ 'Black Widow' release: The actress alleges Disney breached its agreement with her when it released the Marvel flick on streaming service Disney+ at the same time it landed in theaters. Johansson's attorneys say Disney is "hiding behind COVID-19," but with the delta variant being very much a problem, we must say we'd prefer to observe our Avengers films from our couches for the time being.

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Startups/VC Tenderly wants more dApps: Decentralized apps, or dApps, are a big category in the larger blockchain economy. And Tenderly, a startup that just raised $15.3 million, wants folks to build more of them. The company has built a "a developer platform for Ethereum devs to monitor and test the smart contracts that power their decentralized apps." Online grocery continues to attract capital: This time it's Merqueo, which operates an on-demand service in Latin America. Between grocery delivery and so-called "instant" grocery startups, lots of capital is finding its way into the business of bringing food to folks' houses. Merqueo just raised a $50 million Series C for its efforts. La Haus raises $100M for its online real estate marketplace: La Haus is a Colombian startup, as is Merqueo. See, we told you that Latin America was busy! In this case, La Haus raised $50 million in equity capital and $50 million in debt. Per our reporting, the company saw "transactions conducted on its Mexico portal climb by nearly 10x in the second quarter of 2021 compared to the 2020 second quarter." Not bad! More money for mental health: Talkiatry announced earlier today that it has raised a $20 million Series A led by Left Lane Capital. The startup wants to make psychiatry services available through insurance providers and has partnered with a host of them. Anything to make mental health care easier and cheaper for consumers is good by us. Hello Divorce raises $2M so your divorce won't cost $2M: Getting divorced is about as much fun as putting broken glass in your shoe while taking a hike. At least that's what our friends have told us. Hello Divorce wants to make the whole process better. Given that divorce is something that happens rather often to lots of folks, it certainly won't lack for TAM. Pangea raises $2M for its student labor marketplace: Hailing from Providence, Rhode Island, Pangea announced a seed round today. The company's service connects digitally savvy college students with businesses looking for freelance talent. GMV is rising at the company, and now it has more capital in its accounts than ever. Let's see how it grows the rest of the year. Odoo sells $215M of its stock: Now worth over €2 billion, Odoo, an open-source business management software play, is the first unicorn out of Wallonia, a region in Belgium. The round was purely secondary, notably. The company provides most of its software for free, while charging for certain features. Employee-success startup CultureAmp raises $100M: The startup, which was founded to let companies poll their workers, is now worth $150 million. You can think of it as management analytics, providing "turnover prediction and team goal tracking," per our own reporting. In case you were looking for something entirely different, we present a review of Nothing's new earpods.

Livestream e-commerce: Why companies and brands need to tune in This year, livestream viewers in China are projected to spend more than $60 billion on digital shopping experiences where they can interact with influencers in real time. Promoting everything from cosmetics to food, social media stars use Taobao, TikTok and other platforms to tout products and answer live questions. On Taobao’s Single's Day Global Shopping Festival in 2020, livestreams racked up $6 billion in sales, twice as much revenue as the year prior. Sensing a trend, Western startups are getting in on the action, with companies like Whatnot and PopShop.Live raising rounds to build out their infrastructure. Looking forward, Alanna Gregory, senior global director at Afterpay, says she foresees four major trends: Networks. SaaS streaming tools. Host discovery and outreach tools. Host marketplaces and agencies. “For brands, SaaS streaming tools will be the most impactful way to take advantage of livestream commerce trends,” Gregory writes in an Extra Crunch guest post. “All of this will be incredibly transformative.” (Extra Crunch is our membership program, which helps founders and startup teams get ahead. You can sign up here.) Read More Image Credits: seksan Mongkhonkhamsao / Getty Images

Big Tech Inc. We went a bit long on the startup side of things, so let's be brief when it comes to Big Tech. First up, Amazon's FireTV Cube now supports Zoom. Everything should support Zoom. Zoom is good. So, it's both unsurprising and welcome that Amazon is building out greater integration with the video chat provider. Next, Facebook's next product will be a collab with Ray-Ban to build smart glasses. How you feel about this bit of news will depend on what you think about Facebook, but as a former Google Glass fan I suppose I am willing to wait to make judgment. PayPal has a superapp in the wings, a service that will include messaging. Do we want this? I don't know, but superapps — mobile applications that encompass a wide range of services in a single package — are big around the world, so why not here in U.S. as well?

TechCrunch Experts: Growth Marketing We're reaching out to startup founders to tell us who they turn to when they want the most up-to-date growth marketing practices. Fill out the survey here. Read one of the testimonials we've received below! Marketer: Scott Graham Recommended by: Heather Larrabee, CMO, FORM Testimonial: "He was referred to us and blew our socks off from his initial analysis. He's the rare growth adviser expert at strategy and execution. He's a servant leader, a systems thinker, integrates with the team with empathy and curiosity like he's an internal teammate, brings a wealth of cutting-edge knowledge, and a stable of incredible partners and resources. He runs with the best and the brightest, but he's the first one on and the last one off for the day, putting in the time to make things great. He has an uncanny ability to communicate complex concepts and make them accessible for all audiences, and he's been a foundational game changer for our business and many others." Image Credits: SEAN GLADWELL / Getty Images

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Daily Crunch - $150M Series D vaults search-as-a-service provider Algolia to $2.25B valuation

TechCrunch Newsletter

Wednesday, July 28, 2021 • By Alex Wilhelm

Hello and welcome to Daily Crunch for July 28, 2021. What a day. Duolingo went public. Algolia raised an epic round. Crypto prices rose. And we're being treated to a raft of earnings reports from tech's biggest names. If you like tech news, boy do we have an email for you. Let's go! — Alex P.S. Super cheap Disrupt tickets end in two days, so snag yours now. All the cool kids, etc. Read More

The TechCrunch Top 3 Google will require vaccinations for office work: It won't solve the issue of tech workers not wanting to go back to offices after working from home for the last year, but Google is helping set the future of work once again, this time by requiring vaccines for workers returning to its offices. Which makes complete and utter sense. Vaccines are safe, and they keep the people around you safe. Expect to see more of this. Algolia raises $150M: The search-as-a-service company is now $150 million richer and worth a whopping $2.25 billion. The company did not share hard revenue numbers (boo), but did disclose that its annual recurring revenue (ARR) grew by 180% in the last year. The company last raised in 2019, when it added $110 million to its accounts at a valuation north of $500 million. Duolingo goes public: The popular consumer edtech service priced its IPO at $102 last night, a price that we felt was pretty darn good. Now the company is worth a little more than $132 per share, which is quite the first day. Sure, edtech companies in China have taken whacking, but the U.S. market seems rather lucrative at the moment. That's good news for education startups in general. Image Credits: Algolia

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Startups/VC Squire proves that vertical SaaS can scale: Today's Tiger round is Squire, a startup that provides industry-tuned software to barbershops. There are many such businesses, and thus there may be much business available for Squire to command. That appears to be the thesis behind its new $60 million round. The company's service is "used by over 2,000 shops across three continents," per TecCrunch reporting. This startup wants to cut single-use plastic consumption: In all honesty, both you and I are pretty trash for the planet. We use plastics too much, and too often just once. Algramo is out to shake that up by working with brands and providing refill stations for different products. And now it has $8.5 million in capital to keep pursuing its vision. Gong.io is not the only sales tech startup doing numbers: QuotaPath is another, and it just put away a $21.3 million round. The startup "has developed a commission-tracking solution for sales and revenue teams," per TechCrunch. Honestly this makes sense. Sales teams have tooling budgets, and salespeople like to get paid. Bread, meet butter. Seven hundred million dollars for battery recycling: That's the news from Redwood Materials, a company now worth $3.7 billion that wants to recycle scrap from battery production and used consumer batteries. It then takes out the useful bits and feeds those back into production. If the economics work, this rocks. Not just a billionaire's club: Sure, the Bezos and Branson rocket trips have captured lots of media attention, but building rocket-launch tech is not a thinly populated problem space. Lots of companies are working on it, including Isar Aerospace, which just closed a $75 million round. The capital comes after the company raised $91 million last December. Its new capital is an extension of that round. Isar's rockets will be able to take up to 1,000 kilograms to low-Earth orbit. Remember that $100 million mmhmm round? We got the founder of the startup on the Equity podcast for a chat. Take a listen!

Why I make everyone in my company be the CEO for a day In the reality TV series “Undercover Boss,” high-powered executives disguise themselves so they can work alongside everyday employees, ostensibly to learn from them. Flipping that script, software company Vincit USA has a "CEO of the Day" program where staffers move into a metaphorical corner office for 24 hours and receive a very real unlimited budget. There’s just one requirement. “The CEO must make one lasting decision that will help improve the working experience of Vincit employees,” said Ville Houttu, Vincit’s founder and CEO. Since instituting the program, Vincit USA has received multiple awards for its workplace culture and sees reduced staff turnover. “Though it may seem crazy, the initiative has paid off tenfold,” said Houttu. (Extra Crunch is our membership program, which helps founders and startup teams get ahead. You can sign up here.) Read More Image Credits: Blake Little / Getty Images

Big Tech Inc. Our big technology news rundown today has two parts. The first is our usual collection of individual items. Then we have all that you need from recent earnings reports. Walmart is making its e-commerce tools more generally available: One competitor to Amazon's e-commerce might, Walmart, is working with Adobe to "integrate access to Walmart's Marketplace, as well as its various online and in-store fulfillment and pickup technologies, into the Adobe Commerce Platform." Walmart, along with Shopify and BigCommerce, are among the companies pushing back against an Amazon-only world. Snapchat adds personal spaces to its map functionality: Snap's Snapchat product has been on a roll lately, driving strong revenue for its parent company. Today it announced that it is bringing something called "My Spaces" to its mapping tool. What will that do for users? TechCrunch reports that the feature will let users save their favorite locations, share them with friends and get recommendations for other places to go. Twitter digs into e-commerce: That's our takeaway from today's news that Twitter is launching a pilot of a "Shop Module" that will let folks sell stuff from their profile. Sure, Twitter is also moving into subscriptions and live audio and keeping up its streak of not building DM search, and now it will be a mix of Etsy and Amazon to boot! Now, to earnings. Shopify crushed earnings expectations this morning, as did Microsoft and Apple yesterday afternoon. All of the companies were rewarded by seeing their share prices fall today. Why? It appears that public-market investors had largely priced in earnings beats to their share prices. The good news is that they are mostly retaining previously accumulated value. The bad news is that the two companies could be flashing that we're near the peak of tech multiples. Or maybe not. Alphabet also bested estimates and managed to gain — as I write this to you — a fraction of a point in value. In other news, Spotify's ad business had a huge quarter, notable if you are into the economics of the music and podcasting world.

TechCrunch Experts: Growth Marketing TechCrunch wants you to recommend growth marketers who have expertise in SEO, social, content writing and more! If you're a growth marketer, pass this survey along to your clients; we'd like to hear about why they loved working with you. If you’re curious about how these surveys are shaping our coverage, check out this recap of our recent Twitter Spaces event with MKT1, "The MKT1 interview: Growth marketing in 2021, hiring versus outsourcing and more." Read More Image Credits: MKT1

Price alert! TechCrunch Disrupt 2021 early-bird pass sale ends this Friday TechCrunch Disrupt 2021 is big, bold and brings together 10,000+ people from around the world who are passionate about startups. Get your early-bird pass today for less than $100, but this deal won't last forever. Sale ends this Friday, July 30 at 11:59 p.m. PDT. Book your tickets today! Read More

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