Thursday, January 26, 2023

Berlin-based design platform Kittl raises $11.6M Series A to take on Adobe and Canva

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By Christine Hall and Haje Jan Kamps

Thursday, January 26, 2023

Did you know you can buy 3D printed key caps to replace, say, your escape key with a cat? Today, that's our delightful little morsel of whimsy, courtesy of Frederic's review of a new keyboard (scroll all the way to the bottom for a photo of the adorable little kitteh). — Christine and Haje

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Image Credits: Kittl

The TechCrunch Top 3

  • Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery: Mike writes that Kittl is carving out a piece of the graphics world dominated by giants like Canva and Adobe, raising $11.6 million in Series A capital for its design platform that it says "easily turns ideas into graphic products" without the tough learning curve of other platforms.
  • This startup is turning up the heat: European smart thermostat startup Tado was planning to go public, but instead went after another round of funding, gathering up $46.9 million as it pursues profitability. Paul has more.
  • "It's always crypto winter being a Black founder": That's how Iddris Sandu, Spatial Labs' founder, described going after funding for his web3 company. The infrastructure and hardware company picked up $10 million in seed funding to create products and shopping experiences using augmented reality, Dominic-Madori writes.

Startups and VC

Fintech startup Stripe has set a 12-month deadline for itself to go public, either through a direct listing or by pursuing a transaction on the private market, such as a fundraising event and a tender offer, according to sources familiar with the matter. The news comes as a surprise considering the rather dry public market activity in the tech world, Mary Ann and Natasha M report.

There was a brief, beautiful moment for a few months in 2021 when it felt like robotic investments might be immune to broader market forces. We all fundamentally and implicitly understood this to not be the case, but it was a nice moment nevertheless, Brian muses. Now, however, it's becoming clearer that the thing we thought was happening with robotic investments is definitely happening.

Another handful of tech-newsy goodness:

Teach yourself growth marketing: How to perform growth experimentation through A/B testing

Despite the myth, sharks don’t need to keep swimming to keep breathing. Early-stage startups, on the other hand, are not so fortunate.

If driving growth is a priority, companies must run an ongoing series of A/B tests that can help refine marketing messages and make their product pipelines more relevant to customers’ needs.

In part three of a five-article series on growth marketing fundamentals, Jonathan Martinez explains how to properly manage A/B tests, identify statistical significance when reviewing data, and prioritize experiments that maximize reach and impact.

Three more from the TC+ team:

TechCrunch+ is our membership program that helps founders and startup teams get ahead of the pack. You can sign up here. Use code "DC" for a 15% discount on an annual subscription!

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Image Credits: SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY / Getty Images

Big Tech Inc.

In a census of its own making, GitHub says it has 100 million active users, Paul reports. This is a substantial jump from the 3 million it had 10 years ago and even a healthy increase from just three months ago when Microsoft, which acquired the company five years ago, announced GitHub had over 90 million users.

Meanwhile, law enforcement agencies in the United States and Europe got together to seize Hive's ransomware infrastructure, including leak sites and decryption keys, Carly reports. She writes that Hive is "one of the most prolific ransomware operations," focusing mainly on healthcare and public health entities, claiming responsibility for breaches at Illinois-based Memorial Health System in August 2021 and most recently targeting Tata Power, a top power-generation company in India, in October.

And we have four more for you:

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Wednesday, January 25, 2023

'Network issue' causes cloud outage that takes down multiple Microsoft services for 4+ hours

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By Christine Hall and Haje Jan Kamps

Wednesday, January 25, 2023

Hello, Crunchers! We're pretty excited about Matt's TechCrunch Live, where he talks to Cambly about how the company found profits after failing to raise a Series A. Mark your calendar for February 1!  — Christine and Haje

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Image Credits: Drew Angerer

The TechCrunch Top 3

  • And we're back!: That's what Microsoft is saying after some of its services, like Outlook, Xbox Live and Teams, went down during a "change made to the Microsoft Wide Area Network," Ivan reports.
  • What you text is what you'll see: We've been hearing about text-to-image lately, and today is no different. Remember in October when Shutterstock and OpenAI paired up to add some artificial intelligence to Shutterstock's libraries? Well, today the stock photo giant is showing us the fruits of that labor with a generative AI toolkit to create images based on text prompts. Ingrid has more.
  • Plugged in: BMW i Ventures gets a renewed charge from one of its newest investments, infusing $13 million into Bulgaria-based Ampeco, a company providing an electric vehicle charging management platform, Mike reports. As he notes, you might recall that BMW was an early investor in exited companies ChargePoint and ChargeMaster.

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Startups and VC

Injective, a layer-1 blockchain focused on building financial applications, has launched a $150 million fund ecosystem initiative, the platform's CEO and co-founder, Eric Chen, told Jacquelyn in her article, Injective launches $150M ecosystem fund to accelerate interoperable infra and DeFi adoption.

One of the most remarkable things about construction robotics is the sheer breadth of tasks that can potentially be automated, Brian writes. He believes the entire category is a prime target for robotics startups, given that it addresses the three big Ds of automation — dull, dirty and (quite often) dangerous. It makes sense, then, that Built buys fellow construction robotics firm, Roin.

Fun stuff. There's five more, too:

When it comes to large language models, should you build or buy?

Americans spent nearly $20 billion on pizza deliveries in 2021. Most people could probably bake one at home, but speed and convenience are powerful incentives at dinnertime.

The same holds true for machine learning algorithms: Should companies select open source models, license large language models without modifications, or customize them and pay much higher usage rates?

“While building looks extremely attractive in the long run, it requires leadership with a strong appetite for risk over an extended time period,” writes ML engineer Tanmay Chopra.

Three more from the TC+ team:

TechCrunch+ is our membership program that helps founders and startup teams get ahead of the pack. You can sign up here. Use code "DC" for a 15% discount on an annual subscription!

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When it comes to large language models, should you build or buy? image

Image Credits: Jenny Dettrick / Getty Images

Big Tech Inc.

Frederic took a look at what Google was doing at this year's Flutter Forward event and found that the open source framework got some new graphics capabilities, and is launching its first efforts to compile Flutter to WebAssembly and is working on some RISC-V support. He writes, "Virtually all of these capabilities still sit in canary branches and behind experiment flags, but they do show where Google plans to take this project in the months ahead."

Now here's five more for you:

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Tuesday, January 24, 2023

Hackers pinched LastPass customers' encrypted password vaults, parent company admits

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By Christine Hall and Haje Jan Kamps

Tuesday, January 24, 2023

What's up, Crunchers? Good to see you again! We're so glad to have you with us. It's been a really busy day on the site today, and Haje has been busy getting real grumpy at Tesla for not recording the car crash he was in today. (He's fine. Or at least, as fine as he was before the car crash.)  — Christine and Haje

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Image Credits: Bryce Durbin / TechCrunch

The TechCrunch Top 3

  • Apparently the hacker's LastPass wasn't truly the last one: Two months after LastPass experienced a breach, we are now learning more about what the hackers got. Carly writes that the company's owner, GoTo, says hackers stole customers' encrypted backups.
  • If you like the great outdoors: Strava, the activity tracking and social community platform, acquired Fatmap, a 3D mapping platform for the great outdoors, to make that next hike a doozy, Paul reports.
  • What's up with WhatApp: Ivan is following a developing story about WhatsApp releasing its native macOS client in public beta. He writes that "until now, Mac users had to rely on either WhatsApp for the web or its web-based WhatsApp client. Both are not ideal in terms of performance or getting a full-featured experience."

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Startups and VC

It's a tough time to be a richly priced company that didn't go public when the getting was good. Not only are there fewer later-stage players with the resources and appetite to support such companies (e.g., SoftBank and Tiger Global have pulled back dramatically), but also secondary investors have even lost interest. At least, that's Connie's read of a new report, in her excellent article Opportunistic investors are giving up on aging pre-IPO companies.

Connie also reported that Cowboy Ventures closed two new funds totaling $260 million in capital commitments. The outfit garnered $140 million in commitments for its fourth flagship fund and another $120 million for its first opportunity-type fund (its "Mustang Fund").

And we have five more for you:

A VC's perspective on deep tech fundraising in Q1 2023

Successful deep tech startups and SaaS companies generally reach billion-dollar valuations in the same time frame.

“The median deep tech startup took $115 million and 5.2 years to become a unicorn,” says Karthee Madasamy, managing partner at MFV Partners.

New companies in this sector raised around $600 million last year, a steep decline from $800 million in 2021. But Madasamy says recent climate regulation, automation and space are just a few factors stirring investors’ interest during this downturn.

“As it becomes increasingly difficult to realize big exits in the years ahead, the technologies within deep tech that are transforming entire industries offer some of the only paths to ’10x exits.'”

Three more from the TC+ team:

TechCrunch+ is our membership program that helps founders and startup teams get ahead of the pack. You can sign up here. Use code "DC" for a 15% discount on an annual subscription!

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Image Credits: Xi Huo / Getty Images

Big Tech Inc.

Selling or renting a home comes with all sorts of fun, including having to vacate at a moment's notice and strangers walking around your home. If there could be a rainbow amid the rainstorm, it’s Zillow wanting to make booking a home tour for rentals easier. Enter its Calendly-like instant booking feature that can be used without having to get in contact with anyone. Ivan writes that the feature is already available for thousands of properties and will eventually include the ability to choose between a virtual, in-person or self-guided tour.

Now here's five more:

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