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| Hello and welcome to Daily Crunch for August 25, 2021. If you wanted to know just how fast the technology news cycle is running today, look no further than our lead story. Youâll note that it is a complete reversion of the weekâs previously most important news item! What a world! — Alex |
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The TechCrunch Top 3 OnlyFans backtracks, will allow adult content: So much for all that. After igniting an online firestorm by announcing that it would end support and sale of most adult content, OnlyFans has changed course. Now it wonât block the material. For more on the topic, the Equity podcast crew has notes. Warby Parker is going public:Â After a short summer lull, we could be gearing up for yet another IPO cycle. This time the lead-off hitter may be D2C eyewear purveyor Warby Parker. Weâve all heard of the company, so TechCrunch was excited to get into its numbers. Our take? Itâs a very neat company, albeit one that has an interesting time defending its final private-market valuation. Headspace + Ginger:Â News broke today that meditation service Headspace and mental-health-focused startup Ginger are merging to create Headspace Health. The combined entity will be worth $3 billion and have 800 employees. Headspace has long been in competition with Calm, another massive player in the meditation market. |
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Startups/VC Before we dive into a number of thematic pairs of startup news, Kanye West. Heâs out with a gadget called the âStem Player,â which, per TechCrunch, is âdesigned to isolate stems â specific elements like vocals, bass, samples and drumsâ from musical tracks. Itâs a somewhat neat idea. The fact that Kanye is doing it should provide it with a bit of a marketing boost. From the fintech startup world today, we have two stories, both of which make us wonder just how much money can heavily populated fintech verticals absorb before investors get bored? Flink raises $57M more to build the Robinhood of Latin America: Flink raised earlier this year, a $12 million Series A. Now it is back with a pile of new capital. Akin to how every VC wants to fund the next Coinbase, trying to score a piece of the next Robinhood is also big business. Shares has raised $10 million to build a European consumer stock trading service with a social twist. Sure, there are already consumer stock trading services targeting the European market, but private-market capital is betting that thereâs room for yet another. The world is going to need more active investors if all the startups hoping to serve them are going to survive. From the logistics realm this afternoon, two stories that may give you hope for a future in which having stuff brought to your house has a lower carbon footprint and, perhaps, a cheaper price point: Alphabetâs drone delivery business scales:Â Thatâs the news from Down Under. Wing, Alphabetâs drone delivery company, has reached the 100,000-delivery mark, it recently announced. The service is currently live in Logan, Australia, where around 300,000 folks live. Alphabet, please bring this to Providence, Rhode Island. And Coco has raised $36M for super-cute delivery robots: Somewhere in time there was a committee meeting that I missed at which it was decided that all delivery robots had to be cute. I donât know why. Cocoâs delivery robot is, however, adorable. And now very well funded thanks to capital from a Series A led by Sam Altman of Y Combinator fame. Staying close to the logistics theme, hereâs a pair of stories dealing with the world of digital commerce in Europe: YC-backed Membo is building an âapp-based marketplace for local food producers to sell directly to consumers.” Itâs based in Estonia and is taking part in the current Y Combinator batch. Expect to hear more from the company next week during the acceleratorâs demo day event. Membo will compete to some degree with a host of European âinstant groceryâ delivery companies that have raised some $2 billion, Picus Capitalâs Alexander Kremer recently detailed. The investor thinks that startup lessons from China indicate that âinstant delivery is not the magic bullet to crack the dominanceâ of traditional grocery players. And to round us out, cybersecurity venture capital activity has reached new high, and cannabis-focused startup Jane just put together a $100 million round. |
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| By 2030, Indiaâs SaaS industry is estimated to comprise 4%-6% of the global market and generate between $50 billion and $70 billion in yearly revenue, according to a SaaSBOOMi/McKinsey report. âWith the right approach, it wonât be long before the Indian SaaS community becomes a large-scale employer of talent, a significant contributor to Indiaâs GDP and a creator of unmatched products,â says Manav Garg, CEO and founder of Eka Software Solutions. In a guest post, he lays out several key growth drivers, which include âthe largest concentration of developers in the worldâ and the fact that âSaaS is not a winner-take-all market.â Even so, the region still faces challenges, since âgrowth requires a growth mindset.â (Extra Crunch is our membership program, which helps founders and startup teams get ahead. You can sign up here.) Read More |
| | Image Credits: Thitima Thongkham / Getty Images |
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Big Tech Inc. The PC isnât dead:Â So much for iPads taking over the world, new data from Canalys indicates. Per the data company, PC sales rose 17% from year-ago totals, while tablet sales went sideways. Perhaps having full-power machines is more popular than ever, as we all have more work to do than, well, ever? Regardless, the PC news is good for a host of big technology firms, including HP and Lenovo. Hulu launching HDR viewing for some content:Â Better late than never, U.S. video streaming service Hulu started rolling out HDR content support on August 19, which âshould be available to all users with HDR-compatible devices in the coming days,â TechCrunch reports. So far HDR playback only extends to certain, high-profile Hulu content. South Korea delays proposed “anti-Google law”: If passed, TechCrunchâs own Kate Park writes, âSouth Korea will be the first country to prohibit such global tech giants from imposing billing systems on in-app purchases.â Apple and Google, naturally, oppose the measure. |
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TechCrunch Experts: Growth Marketing Weâre 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 weâve received below! Marketer: One Net Inc. Recommended by: The Good Ride Testimonial: âExceptional SEO expertise. My e-comm startup relies 100% on SEO traffic, and three years ago we were delisted from Google because we didn’t understand about duple content. One Net fixed our site, and optimized it for Google, which allowed us to get back into the SERPs. Bottom line: They saved our business.â |
| | Image Credits: SEAN GLADWELL / Getty Images |
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