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Today, Haje is particularly excited that he was able to persuade the gotechbusiness.com Plus team to let him publish one of his Pitch Deck Teardowns without the paywall. If you’re not a TC+ subscriber and you’re curious what a critique of a $65 million funding round with a $1.7 billion valuation looks like, here’s your lucky day. In addition to the freebie, it might be a particularly good time to subscribe as we’re running a Labor Day sale for TC+ annual memberships.
We’re also going to Minneapolis soon, and we’ve just published the agenda for the free gotechbusiness.com virtual event that should have been called “All Eyez on Mi(nnesota)”. Of apologies to Tupac.
Have a nice rest-of-your-Thursday, and know that Friday is so close we can almost smell the sweet stench of a long Labor Day weekend. Aaaaah. — Christine and hi
Contents
The gotechbusiness.com Top 3
- When the doorbell beckons: Ring has a shiny new feature called Ring Intercom, designed to interface with existing apartment intercom systems. Brian has more.
- appreciation bump: Fintech fraud fighter Alloy is now worth $1.55 billion after depositing $52 million in new financing, Mary Ann reports.
- Sharing is caring: Kylea spoke with Slack CEO Steve Wood about the company’s new automation features that make workflows more shareable and discoverable by other Slack users, and where the company is headed next.
Startups and VC
Reddit’s wave of takeovers continues this morning with news that the company is acquiring technology from Spiketrap, the audience contextualization company. The deal terms have not been disclosed, but Reddit says Spiketrap’s AI-powered contextual analysis and tools will help Reddit improve in areas such as ad quality scoring and boost prediction models for boosting automatic bidding, Sarah reports.
A few more, now with Moar Emoji!
9 Strategies That Will Help You Overcome Your Fundraising Fear
Image Credits: Vicki Jauron, Babylon and beyond photography (Opens in a new window) / Getty Images
Pleasure cruises usually begin with a ship-wide safety briefing where passengers don life jackets and learn what to do in an emergency.
Likewise, there is no reason to fear raising money to start a new venture, but founders should have a healthy respect for a process that is not completely under their control.
“Every change is an opportunity to create leverage, and a downturn is no exception,” writes Masha Bucher, founder and general partner of early-stage VC firm Day One Ventures.
In this TC+ post, she discusses the current environment and shares “action tips for closing pre-seed to Series B rounds”.
(gotechbusiness.com+ is our membership program that helps founders and startup teams move forward. You can register here.)
Big Tech Inc.
Yesterday we reported that Snap was laying off 20% of its staff, which apparently includes the entire Zenly team. Today we enjoyed Paul‘s and RomainDay two looking at what happened to the social card app, which was acquired by Snap in 2017, and perhaps answering the bigger question: “Zenly is still hugely popular, so why is Snap shutting it down?”
- Yo ho, yo ho, it’s a commercial life for me: Ivan has bad news that Disney+ is looking for an in-app commerce feature that will allow users to scan a QR code and be taken to a branded site.
- Take a position: A group of Googlers continues to speak out against their employer over the $1.2 billion Project Nimbus contract and fears that Google’s technology will contribute to digital surveillance in the occupied Palestinian territories, Amanda reports.
- edit yourself: Later this month, Twitter Blue subscribers will be among the first to get the chance to try out Twitter’s new feature that allows them to edit their tweets, Ivan writes.
- Price tag: Instacart acquires Eversight, an AI-powered pricing and promotion company. Aisha writes that this link will “give retailers and CPG brands access to new individualized and customized pricing tools.”
- To the moon: Or actually to the International Space Station. NASA pays $1.4 billion to SpaceX in exchange for five additional transport flights for astronauts, Aria writes.
