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Today is Thursday 28th April 2022 and Hyge’s blood pressure is slowly returning to what is considered normal after rages over social security numbers for minutes. Look, it’s hard to get used to the quirks and weaknesses of a new country, okay? Please don’t tell him how healthcare works in this country; we will never hear the end of it.
In other news, a brilliant new fintech newsletter comes out on TechCrunch Sunday. Sign up today so you don’t miss out this weekend! The third episode of our podcast about crypto and blockchain “Chain Reaction” came out today, so fill your ears with the gentle tones of the soothing voices of Lucas and Anita.
Tomorrow is Friday, hooray! – Christine and Hadje
TechCrunch Top 3
- Twitter admitted to re-evaluating accounts: Hey, guess what? Twitter today announced its first quarter earnings.. And it was miscalculated, showing that he reported more users than he actually had – almost 2 million – something Sarah points out that it is “an embarrassing situation that may have prompted the company to give more serious consideration to adopting Elon Musk’s proposal take the company private in a $44 billion deal.” Meanwhile, Alex looked into what the acquisition could mean for Twitter ad revenue.
- Death and taxes are really inevitable: It’s not every day that we quote Ben Franklin in a story, but in this case it’s because of technology that makes it easier for us to do things like paying taxes. By then, the tax filing mobile app Taxfix had raised $220 million to become a unicorn. Taxes aren’t always easy, so it’s good to have someone who knows what to do. We love how CEO Martin Ott put it, “We hacked the tax accountant’s brain into codes.”
- There is Google Russia: His name is Yandex, and he’s selling his media division, you know, to a company called VKontakte, which is considered the “local equivalent of Facebook.” Not sure if it will get better. this is news Natasha has been following for a month now, and she reports that the sale was the result of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, causing many companies to reassess their media assets.
Startups and VK
One of our favorite things about compiling the Daily Crunch is that we can cheer on our colleagues and read their fantastic work. Today it Kyle-o-frame. He wrote about how Synthesis AI raises $17 million to create synthetic data to improve computer vision and how a payroll provider Symmetrical.ai Raised $18.5M make payments to employees smoother. CommandBar made $19 million continue building a search and browse plugin for web applications and Deepset raises $14 million to help companies build natural language processing applications. Kyle, your fingers must be tired – go treat yourself to a cup of coffee and play baseball or something.
We love Christine’s account of Lemon Perfect’s queen bee investment journey: Two years after Lemon Perfect was spotted in Beyoncé’s limousine, the superstar has become his patron..
Also! We started a series of deck dismantling, and we looking for startups that want their presentations to be considered. Get involved!
More news than you can shake at the table at:
- Shuffle your mortal oil: BlocPower wants to evict fossil fuels one building at a timereplacing them with more environmentally friendly alternatives.
- Grozovoi writes: Once you think you’ve learned to ignore ad copy, Movable Ink comes with personalized marketing content. and a $55 million bag of cash to build content-generating AI.
- If you want it done right, you have to do it on your shelf.: Oware optimizes supply chain in Pakistanbased on a $3.3 million seed round.
- Without a car in the world: Post-pandemic used car platforms are booming, and Spotawheel has just raised 100 million euros. It is active in Poland and Greece and is preparing to launch in Romania.
- More liars, less smoke: Dat Bike is the creator of Vietnam’s first domestic electric motorcycle.and we like the cafe racer style a bit.
Frédéric Dam of GV on product-to-market fit: “You have one chance to have a good experience”
Image credits: John Lamb (Opens in a new window) / Getty Images
In a fireside chat early on at TechCrunch, Frederick Dam, a GV investor partner who previously led product and engineering teams at Uber, Yahoo, and Smugmug, shared her thoughts on product-to-market fit.
Dame touched on several issues, including the need to collect customer data as early as possible, iteration and testing strategies without the use of engineering resources, and in particular why founders should be vulnerable when attracting investors:
“Trust me with what you don’t know or what doesn’t work,” she said, “because once we invest, we still have to work on it.”
(TechCrunch+ is our membership program that helps founders and startup teams get ahead. You can register here.)
Big Tech Inc.
Get the popcorn ready: We already talked about Google and Facebook in the top three, so let’s start this section with a small part of Amazon. The company has launched a movie rental service in India with over 40 original and collaborative shows and films that will enable customers to get early access to both Indian and foreign films.
Rounding off some income: Today’s earnings will bring you the letter “T”, which rhymes with “P”, and this means Peacock, who added 4 million paid subscribers. Meta the metaverse is not goodbut Facebook has gained users.
Acquisition news: It looks like Microsoft will add another company to its family. Activision Blizzard shareholders vote to approve sale. Meanwhile, Hackerone acquired PullRequesta YC-backed company that will provide the bug-finding company with some code review skills.
The judge sided with Elon Musk: He’ll probably win with the Twitter deal, but he can definitely tick the “win” category here. A Delaware judge ruled in his favor after lawsuit put forward by Tesla shareholders, who accused Musk of forcing Tesla’s board of directors to buy SolarCity back in 2016.
Oh Snap!: Our reporters have been busy covering Snap in various stories today, which we will list below. We would like to emphasize that he has created a new gadget that will make you forget what a selfie stick is. Pixy, Snap’s mini drone, is your camera when you don’t have anyone to hold your phone. Also:
- Snap offers Lens Cloud for developers
- New augmented reality tools for in-app shopping for retailers
- Snapchat adds new assistive devices for Bitmoji avatars
- Snap and Live Nation team up to use augmented reality at concerts and festivals
- Snapchat’s new ‘director mode’ lets you quickly become a video maker
Credit: techcrunch.com /