As you enter Startups Weekly, Haje will tell you about all the important news in the world of startups for the past week. If you sign up here, it will come to your email every Friday.
Musk’s 10-month-old baby, xAI, is getting close to a huge $6 billion funding round. The social network X, which used to be called Twitter and is also part of Elon’s tech family, has already bought shares. At first, the deal was only meant to bring in $3 billion, but as more people wanted to join, the price went up. Musk’s friends from Sequoia Capital, Future Ventures, and other groups may also be investing in AI. At this point, it all sounds like Mean Girls: “You can’t sit with us.” What bothers me the most, though, is how cocky Musk should be about all of this. It’s okay, I’m just mad that none of my startups ever raised even $6 million, let alone three times that amount.
Yes, TikTok may be about to be banned from the U.S. for good (though I hasten to add that the previous government tried that too, and TikTok is still here and strong), but it may be sneaky in more than one way. TikTok is reportedly playing hide-and-seek with Apple. Instead of giving Apple 30% of in-app sales, it looks like they’re trying to get people to buy their digital tipping coins from their website instead. But don’t tell anyone—it’s a secret! The tool seems to be hidden from some users (looking at you, big spenders). Will Apple fire them like they did with Fortnite? Time will tell.
Your founders are bad: I had an open and honest conversation with Tom Blomfield, founder of Monzo Bank and current partner at Y Combinator, at TechCrunch Early Stage. He told me everything I needed to know about how venture capitalists make decisions. He says that buyers want unicorns that can give them 1,000 times their money back; anything less is an epic fail. They’re not just looking at your goods or business plan. No, they’re looking at YOU to see if you can make their money grow like rabbit feed.
Start-up News That Caught Our Attention This Week
EyeEm, you sneaky dog! Berlin-based photo-sharing app that was once a “Insta-challenger” and almost went out of business last year has found a new way to make money off of its users: it’s now teaching AI to take over the world! Yes, they are selling your snaps to teach computers how to learn. People who used the service were offered 30 days to either scram their digital photo albums or give up their photos for good. Do you still want to opt out? You can’t just swipe left on Tinder—you have to delete your pictures by hand. Wait for it… the really cool part is that if you get mad and delete your account, you won’t get any more payouts. Oh no, a sad trombone.
“Game of Thrones” meets the tech world. Welcome to the newest season of Techstars! CEO Maëlle Gavet is facing battles all over her kingdom. There was a bank failure, an end to a foreign accelerator program, and some questionable posts on LinkedIn. That’s just the beginning. It’s more exciting than an episode of The Real Housefounders when you add in the problems with Swedish labor law. She also has to deal with a revolt against her rule by the whole company, a bad work environment caused by her efforts to cut costs, and hiring people who have as much startup experience as my goldfish. (It stopped living in 2007). Knee-mo, rest in peace. Keep reading for this exciting story of power struggles, business drama, questionable finances, and planning. I can’t promise dragons or White Walkers, but there will be plenty of fire-breathing and cold stares!
- Breaking news: iPhones are silently rising up against the oppression of alarm clocks in the morning! The company Apple said they would wake up these sleepy phones, but they haven’t told us when this will happen.
- The fur-AI-ous and the f-AI-st: Get ready for strong “Fast & Furious” vibes, but without the grunts from Vin Diesel. For the first time ever, self-driving cars competed against a former Formula One driver at an event put on by the Abu Dhabi Autonomous Racing League (A2RL).
- Not sure why you need developers: Google has decided to play a game of “corporate musical chairs” just weeks before its annual I/O developer meeting. It has fired people and moved people around in the Flutter, Dart, and Python teams.
A Few Fun Ways Out
The cybersecurity company Rubrik chose to take a stroll on Wall Street this week, and BAM! When they went public, shares went up 16% right away. At first, they were priced at $32 per share, which was just a bit above their goal range. By the end of trading, they were down to a nice $37. That’s one way to strut your stuff! Their worth went from $3.5 billion in 2019 to an amazing $6.6 billion today because of this little adventure. That’s pretty good for a business that hasn’t even started making money yet! What’s their secret sauce? In just one year, subscription income went from 73% to 91%. But, hey, who needs making money when you have stickiness? With Reddit and Ibotta leading the IPO party parade, it may look like the party is just getting started. But interest rate cuts could soon ruin the fun. No question, Greylock is laughing so hard that he can’t even see straight.
“Shark Tank” star Truffle Shuffle was just bought by meat-obsessed company ButcherBox, which has already made $600 million. The purchase isn’t so much an attempt to get rid of competitors as it is to help ButcherBox’s customers stop burning their steaks. Thanks to our good friend COVID-19, founders Jason McKinney and Tyler Vorce were desperate because they had $20,000 worth of truffles but no restaurants to sell them to. This is how Truffle Shuffle came to be.
This Week Had The Most Interesting Fundraisers
- Here, cat, cat: RevenueCat, which is like the fairy godmother of app payments, just got $12 million to bring its magic kingdom to the web. Perfect for cats. It runs more than 30,000 apps and handles more than $2 billion in payments every year. Sounds good.
- Like a flip phone but for the house: Get ready, everyone! Backflip got $15 million to help people who want to buy and sell houses. Because why work hard at old-fashioned physical labor when you can just throw money at the problem and watch the value of your home go through the roof?
- Yes, I agree that AI needs more money: The OpenAI Startup Fund has done it again, this time getting $15 million from two backers who like to stay anonymous (hmmmm). It named Ian Hathaway as the head of the fund and its only partner (because why share the fun?). Remember when people were shocked when they learned that OpenAI CEO Sam Altman had all the power? Even though they said it was “temporary,” it caused a lot of trouble!
Other Stories You Can’t Miss…
This week was bad for privacy in health care. The CEO of UnitedHealthcare says that “maybe a third” of Americans were affected by their latest hack. Kaiser also lost a lot of customer data. Thanks, you silly people.
Also Read: With a New Deal From Umg, Tiktok Can Bring Back Tay and Billie
In any case. These are some more fun stories. Could be. At the very least, interesting. It’s also possible that they just got a huge amount of traffic this week. I’m not sure what factors I use to choose the stories, but please read them.
- It’s raining because of the cloud: Google Cloud is making a lot of money. With a huge 28% rise, the business unit just beat Wall Street’s predictions, making it rain thanks to a never-ending need for AI tools that cloud infrastructure supports.
- Everything is “go go to”… No, not that way! Hello and welcome to another episode of “Autopilot Antics” with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) and Tesla! The NHTSA wrapped up their exciting investigation into hundreds of crashes in which drivers used Autopilot like a seasoned chauffeur instead of an assist system. The investigation ended with 13 tragic and fatal story twists.
- This part of the email is just extra text: That is, iPadding. It seems like Apple has planned yet another event to show off new products, just when you thought they were done. There are rumors that we will get a new iPad Pro and Air, as well as a new Apple Pencil and keyboard case. I’ll be there and report to the hardware team, so stay tuned.
- The soup is awful, and the amounts are very small (ahem): Llama 3, Meta’s brand-new AI robot, is now free to chat with anyone. It’s like that party person who just repeats random web search results without being good at any one thing. It is free, though, so why not?
- I wish this existed when I was learning English: Google is once again showing that it’s not just for snooping on your ex and winning trivia games at the bar. A brand-new tool called “Speaking practice” is being tested. It uses AI to help people speak English better, and no, it doesn’t involve asking about the weather or the library.
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