Daily Crunch - Calendly valued at $3B

TechCrunch Newsletter

Tuesday, January 26, 2021 • By Anthony Ha

A popular scheduling startup raises a big funding round, Twitter makes a newsletter acquisition and Beyond Meat teams up with PepsiCo. This is your Daily Crunch for January 26, 2021.

The big story: Calendly valued at $3B Calendly, which helps users schedule and confirm meeting times, has raised $350 million from OpenView Venture Partners and Iconiq. Until now, the Atlanta-based startup had only raised $550K, but the company says it has 10 million monthly users, with $70 million in subscription revenue last year. “Calendly has a vision increasingly to be a central part of the meeting life cycle,” said OpenView’s Blake Bartlett.   Read more Image Credits: the burtons / Getty Images

Major Update To The UX Development Platform Used By 1.5M+ Devs Sponsored by The Qt Company The all-new major release of Qt (Qt 6) has made huge advances in next-gen software development productivity & scalability. See the feature updates to the platform that Mercedes-Benz, LG Electronics, & more are using to develop industry-leading UXs. Read more

The tech giants Twitter acquires newsletter platform Revue — Twitter is getting into the newsletter business. TikTok is being used by vape sellers marketing to teens — Sellers are offering flavored disposable vapes, parent-proof “discreet” packaging and no ID checks. PepsiCo and Beyond Meat launch poorly named joint venture for new plant-based food and drinks — The name? The PLANeT Partnership. Image Credits: Fernando Trabanco Fotografía / Getty Images

Startups, funding and venture capital Fast raises $102M as the online checkout wars continue to attract huge investment — The new funding was led by Stripe. SetSail nabs $26M Series A to rethink sales compensation — SetSail says salespeople should be paid them throughout the sales cycle. Mealco raises $7M to launch new delivery-centric restaurants — By launching a restaurant with Mealco, chefs don’t sign a lease or pay any other upfront costs.   Image Credits: picture alliance / Getty Images

Advice and analysis from Extra Crunch Ten VCs say interactivity, regulation and independent creators will reshape digital media in 2021 — We asked about the likelihood of further industry consolidation, whether we'll see more digital media companies take the SPAC route and, of course, what they're looking for in their next investment. The five biggest mistakes I made as a first-time startup founder — Finmark CEO Rami Essaid has some regrets. Does a $27B or $29B valuation make sense for Databricks? — A look at Databricks' growth history, economics and scale. (Extra Crunch is our membership program, which helps founders and startup teams get ahead. You can sign up here.)   Image Credits: Aleksandar Nakic / Getty Images

Everything else President Joe Biden commits to replacing entire federal fleet with electric vehicles — His commitment is tied to a broader campaign promise to create 1 million new jobs in the American auto industry and supply chains. Meet the early-stage founder community at TC Early Stage 2021 — Early Stage part one focuses on operations and fundraising and takes place on April 1-2, while Early Stage part two focusing on marketing, PR and fundraising and runs July 8-9. Image Credits: Drew Angerer / Getty Images

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Daily Crunch - Twitter unveils Birdwatch

TechCrunch Newsletter

Monday, January 25, 2021 • By Anthony Ha

Twitter pilots a new tool to fight disinformation, Apple brings celebrity-guided walks to the Apple Watch and Clubhouses raises funding. This is your Daily Crunch for January 25, 2021.

The big story: Twitter unveils Birdwatch Twitter launched a new product today that it says will offer “a community-based approach to misinformation.” With Birdwatch, users will be able to flag tweets that they find misleading, write notes to add context to those tweets and rate the notes written by others. This is supposed to be a complement to the existing system where Twitter removes or labels particularly problematic tweets, rather than a replacement. What remains to be seen: How Twitter will handle it when two or more people get locked into a battle and post a flurry of conflicting notes about whether a tweet is misleading or not. Read more Image Credits: Omar Marques/SOPA Images/LightRocket / Getty Images

Send money around the globe in 15 seconds or less with Paysend Sponsored by Paysend Paysend secures its spot as a major fintech solution with a record 35k active users who completed over 45k transfers in a single day. Most transactions took 15 seconds or less! Learn more about how you can send money around the globe at record speeds. Read more

The tech giants Walking with Dolly — Apple discusses how and why it brought Time to Walk to the Watch. Google pledges grants and facilities for COVID-19 vaccine programs — The tech giant is one of several large corporations that have pledged support to local government agencies and medical providers to help increase vaccinations. Facebook will give academic researchers access to 2020 election ad targeting data — Starting next month, Facebook will open up academic access to a data set of 1.3 million political and social issue ads. Image Credits: Shirlaine Forrest/WireImage / Getty Images and Apple

Startups, funding and venture capital Clubhouse announces plans for creator payments and raises new funding led by Andreessen Horowitz — While we try to track down the actual value of this round, Clubhouse has confirmed it will be introducing products to help creators on the platform get paid. Taboola is going public via SPAC — The transaction is expected to close in the second quarter, and the combined company will trade on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker symbol TBLA. Wolt closes $530M round to continue expanding beyond restaurant delivery — The Helsinki-based online ordering and delivery company initially focused on restaurants but has since expanded to other verticals.

Advice and analysis from Extra Crunch Qualtrics raises IPO pricing ahead of debut — After being acquired by SAP, Qualtrics announced it would spin out as its own public company. Fintechs could see $100 billion of liquidity in 2021 — The Matrix Fintech Index weighs public markets, liquidity and a new e-commerce trend. Unpacking Chamath Palihapitiya's SPAC deals for Latch and Sunlight Financial — There's no escaping SPACs, at least for a little while. (Extra Crunch is our membership program, which helps founders and startup teams get ahead. You can sign up here.) Image Credits: TechCrunch

Everything else Moderna says it's making variant-specific COVID-19 vaccines, but its existing vaccine should still work — Moderna has detailed some of the steps it's taking to ensure that its vaccine remains effective in the face of emerging strains of the SARS-CoV-2 virus that leads to COVID-19. Original Content podcast: 'Bridgerton' is an addictive reimagining of Jane Austen-style romance — Did I mention that the cast is insanely good-looking? Image Credits: ADEK MICA/AFP / Getty Images

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Daily Crunch - Alphabet shuts down Loon

TechCrunch Newsletter

Friday, January 22, 2021 • By Anthony Ha

Alphabet pulls the plug on its internet balloon company, Apple is reportedly developing a new MacBook Air and Google threatens to pull out of Australia. This is your Daily Crunch for January 22, 2021.

The big story: Alphabet shuts down Loon Alphabet announced that it’s shutting down Loon, the project that used balloons to bring high-speed internet to more remote parts of the world. Loon started out under Alphabet’s experimental projects group X, before spinning out as a separate company in 2018. Despite some successful deployments, it seems that Loon was never able to find a sustainable business model. “While we've found a number of willing partners along the way, we haven't found a way to get the costs low enough to build a long-term, sustainable business,” Loon CEO Alastair Westgarth wrote in a blog post. “Developing radical new technology is inherently risky, but that doesn't make breaking this news any easier." Read more Image Credits: Loon

TechCrunch Early Stage events are back with more founder masterclasses Sponsored by TechCrunch TechCrunch Early Stage is returning on April 1&2 and July 8&9 to offer founders an unrivaled opportunity to learn from top experts how best to move ahead in the startup game. During these virtual events, you'll take part in interactive sessions with top investors and ecosystem experts, in fields ranging from fundraising and law, to growth and recruiting and more! Early bird sale is happening for a limited time! Register today and save. Read more

The tech giants Apple reportedly planning thinner and lighter MacBook Air with MagSafe charging — The plan is reportedly to release the new MacBook Air as early as late 2021 or 2022. Google threatens to close its search engine in Australia as it lobbies against digital news code — Google is dialing up its lobbying against draft legislation intended to force it to pay news publishers. Cloudflare introduces free digital waiting rooms for any organizations distributing COVID-19 vaccines — The goal is to help health agencies and organizations tasked with rolling out COVID-19 vaccines to maintain a fair, equitable and transparent digital queue. Image Credits: Malte Mueller / Getty Images

Startups, funding and venture capital 'Slow dating' app Once is acquired by Dating Group for $18M as it seeks to expand its portfolio — Once has 9 million users on its platform, with an additional 1 million users from a spin-out app called Pickable. MotoRefi raises $10M to keep pedal on auto refinancing growth — CEO Kevin Bennett sees the opportunity to service Americans who collectively hold $1.2 trillion in auto loans. Backed by Vint Cerf, Emortal wants to protect your digital legacy from 'bit-rot' —  Emortal is a startup that wants to help you organize, protect, preserve and pass on your "digital legacy" and protect it from becoming unreadable. Image Credits: Lukatme / Shutterstock

Advice and analysis from Extra Crunch How VCs invested in Asia and Europe in 2020 — The unicorns are feasting. End-to-end operators are the next generation of consumer business — VC firm Battery has tracked seismic shifts in how consumer purchasing behavior has changed over the years. Drupal's journey from dorm-room project to billion-dollar exit — Twenty years ago, Drupal and Acquia founder Dries Buytaert was a college student at the University of Antwerp. (Extra Crunch is our membership program, which helps founders and startup teams get ahead. You can sign up here.) Image Credits: Natalia Timchenko / Getty Images

Everything else UK resumes privacy oversight of adtech, warns platform audits are coming — The U.K.'s data watchdog has restarted an investigation of adtech practices that, since 2018, have been subject to scores of complaints under GDPR. Boston Globe will consider people's requests to have articles about them anonymized — It's reminiscent of the EU's "right to be forgotten," though potentially less controversial. Image Credits: terekhov igor / Shutterstock

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