To get a roundup of the biggest and most important stories from TechCrunch delivered to your inbox every day at 3pm PT, subscribe here.
Hello and welcome to Daily Crunch for Thursday, March 31, 2022!
It’s a beautiful day in our neck of the woods, and we’ve got a big news list for you today, so let’s get on with it.
Take your calendar and add these two: We’re doing a Data and Culture Transformation Event on April 26 for big data buffs, and now is your last chance to buy discounted tickets for our face-to-face TC Sessions: Mobility event on May 18 and 19, as well as the virtual event on May 20.
Don’t worry, it’s Thursday. The weekend is almost here. You can do it; we believe in you. – cristina and Hello
TechCrunch Top 3
- The SEC analyzes another EV SPAC: In today’s news brief, several Faraday Future executives find themselves subpoenaed by the US Securities and Exchange Commission amid the agency’s look at electric vehicle companies that went public through companies acquisitions for special purposes. The SPAC itself is not under the microscope, but instead alleges inaccurate statements the company made to investors. Okay, I’m sure Faraday Future did the best it could – everyone does a miSPAC from time to time.
- Klarna, Klarna, Klarna, Klarna, Klarna chameleon: Buy Now, Pay Later The Klarna company is showing us just how versatile it can be and that you won’t be left out of a good deal. Its new open banking application programming interface, Klarna Kosma, helps businesses connect to bank accounts and appears to be an answer to Visa announces that it will acquire Tink.
- Are startup layoffs coming?: It is a question that Alex Wilhelm made us think about today. Valuations are high, but traction is not up to par with some companies he called “paper unicorns(spectacular phrase by the way). Could all of this mean that we may see layoffs from companies that were able to collect large amounts of dough, but couldn’t make the doughnuts? Stay tuned.
Startups and VCs
We get a little excited every time Y Combinator does a series of demo days. I recommend you read all our coverage this week, obvious, but if you want a quick summary, read Part 1 and part 2 from our “everything you need to know” posts, make yourself a cup of coffee and get on with our favorite startups Part 1 and part 2then pour yourself an adult beverage and wrap it with Devin’s irreverently irresistible (and irrationally tongue-in-cheek) take on his favorite YC logos.
Apparently, it’s the season for new venture funds. Freestyle closed its sixth fund, adding $130 million of dry powder to investweather Gumi Cryptos Capital (gCC) has a block of $110 million in cash in the form of its second to unfold in the crypto universe.
Docker was on the ropes for a while, but wow, he reappeared. The company just announced a huge round, raising $105 million of fresh capital at a $2 billion valuation..
🦸 More stories from up, up and away:
- Speaking of mono-ridden fantasy horses, Head of Women’s Leadership Network she rode and rode her unicorn status on her continued future of developing women in leadership over the course of her $100 million Series B round.
- Kenyan social commerce platform Tushop is strapping fuel for growth, raising $3 million.
- 66% of Egyptian adults do not have access to formal financial services. Khazna raised $38 million to help address that gap for low- and middle-income people.
- Famous dirty business, real estate, but French startup Deepski raised $166 million to improve the measurement and impact of ESG data across the industry.
- The Great Renunciation is having some interesting effects on the job market and Pursuit spotted an opportunity. He raised a $10 million fund to create a self-sustaining job training service with a really interesting business model.
- Hacking your customer data is a sure way to lose goodwill, and Antimatter raised a $12 million Series A to help avoid that kind of thing.
- Moving from videoconferencing to high-end video production, BoxedUp brings the sharing economy to a previously untapped market.
- Freelancers are a bunch of squirrels at best (as freelancers, we can say with the utmost confidence), and managing them can get truly quixotic. Archie aims to make things easier for managersand he just closed $4.5 million to do it.
- Space is complex and as much fun as Kerbal That is, it is not enough for the commercial simulation of space missions. Slingshot Aerospace thinks it can do better and just landed a $25 million Space Force contract to build a digital twin of the night sky from ink.
- Datanomik brings open banking to LatAmwith executives from dLocal and AstroPay at the helm.
- Wouldn’t it be great if you could predict the future? Black Crow AI raised $25 million to help e-commerce people figure out what their users are most likely to buy.
- I’m not a huge fan of injections, needless to say, I was pretty excited to learn about NovaXS Biotech’s drive to make injection therapies without needles.
5 things first-time founders need to remember when working with VCs
Image credits: carol yepes (Opens in a new window) / fake images
There’s nothing better than experience as experience, which is why we were pleased to publish a column written by Zach DeWitt, winner of the 2013 TechCrunch Meetup and Pitch-off.
DeWitt, who became a VC after selling Drop, Inc. to Snapchat in 2016, shares five essential lessons for first-time founders wandering the desert looking for an investor who is “a true partner.”
There is an inherent power imbalance when asking a stranger for money, but “venture capitalists should work to earn their trust,” DeWitt writes.
“In many ways, it’s like finding the right spouse.”
(TechCrunch+ is our membership program, helping startup founders and teams get ahead. You can sign up here.)
great tech inc
- Microsoft delves deeper into process mining: What is process mining? Don’t worry, reporter. kyle wigs (who is completing his first week with us) tells you what it’s all about. He also says that Microsoft’s latest acquisition of process mining company Minit “comes at a time when the business process automation industry in general, which continues to flush with cashis heading towards general consolidation.”
- Intel also gets into mergers and acquisitions: We noticed it last year, when Israel-based Granulate received funding, which seemed like the network management space was undergoing some consolidation. Well, that was confirmed today when Intel said it acquired Granulate “to continue to expand its operations in Israel and the tools that Intel provides customers to better manage traffic on Intel-powered kit.”
- New investigation sheds light on Viasat hack: The cyberattack that brought down the US-based satellite communications provider’s service in Europe was deemed “likely the result of destructive cleaning malware” that originated in Russia, we report. The identity of the pirates is still unknown.
- The strike that turned into a potential lawsuit: Meta and her subcontractor, Sama, are in the dock in Kenya, facing legal action alleging poor working conditions. Reporter Annie Njanja describes the accusations against the companies by Sama’s former contractor, Daniel Motaung, who claims that contractors like him were not told what their job would be, but that it ended up being content moderation where they watched content quite graphic for a long time. time, but often they were not given time to compose themselves or offered support when it became too much. Sama denies any wrongdoing.
