Ingrid
@ingridlunden
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34,650
Following
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381
Statuses
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Journalist. Mom. Wife. Traveler. Speaks English, American, Russian, Franglais, Spanglish, in metaphors. ingrid @techcrunch .com DMs OPEN
London
Joined February 2009
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Some tech PRs really know their shit. I mean really. Huge props to those of you out there.
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I think there is a lot of revisiting of older stories to be done. As a society, and specifically as the media industry, we have given anecdotes likes these a pass way too often.
WATCH:
@BetteMidler
to Barbara Walters in an interview over 20 years ago. She says
@GeraldoRivera
and his producer shoved her into her bathroom, stuck poppers under her nose, and proceeded to grope her.
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Dear PRs (not all PRs): PLEASE stop giving story embargoes of one time to one outlet, and a later time to another without being transparent about it. It's sneaky + exploitative. Shame on you.
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The Airbnb ecosystem is alive and well.
Guesty, a tech platform for property managers on Airbnb and other rental sites, raises $35M by
@ingridlunden
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And with that... I'm not working for the rest of the week. Currently in hospital w/my brave and beautiful daughter who had a major operation yesterday to fix significant scoliosis. She has had absolutely stellar care here in London. Thank you NHS.
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Today in robotic PR pitches: 'Dear Ingrid, Would you like to meet Ida Tin in Berlin on Tuesday? She's being interviewed by Ingrid Lunden earlier in the day on stage.' 🙄
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Apple's biggest ever acquisition in terms of employees: 300 are joining. If you know how Apple typically buys small teams, this is a big deal for the company. tip
@Techmeme
Apple is paying $300M in cash to buy a part of Dialog Semiconductor and expand its chipmaking in Europe by
@ingridlunden
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PowerPoint is not great, but it dominates the world of presentations. Now the folks who built Wunderlist (the to-do app acquired by Msft) are taking it on with something new, 'the Slack of presentation software' in the words of the CEO. Slack's also backing them... tip
@Techmeme
Pitch, from the founders of Wunderlist, raises $19M to take on Powerpoint in presentations by
@ingridlunden
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WFH is getting to everyone just a little. I just talked to a founder who I'm pretty sure just signed off our phone conversation with "I love you." He then laughed uncomfortably and I pretended not to hear and hung up. (Have never met this person in person.)
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So very proud to say my daughter is one of these 223!
In December 1,150 online interviews took place over 10 days with 110 academics meeting more than 800 prospective St John’s undergrads.
In a hugely competitive field, congrats to the 223 applicants that we have made a
@Cambridge_Uni
offer to & thank you to everyone who applied👏
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Handshake is taking on LinkedIn in targeting twenty-something users, and in addressing diversity, two areas where the MSFT-owned giant has tried but is not as strong as it should be. It's much smaller (14m vs 560m) but it's an interesting opportunity. tip
@Techmeme
Handshake, a LinkedIn for university students and diversity, raises $40M on a $275M valuation by
@ingridlunden
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I sat down with the 25-yo (25!) CEO of Bolt to talk about how being a late mover has helped it take on Uber in Europe, Africa and beyond. Also he confirmed they are raising more $$ to keep growing on the same low-cost biz model.
Taxify rebrands as Bolt to expand its transport options beyond private cars by
@ingridlunden
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Two years ago Android took 43% of smartphone profits (Apple 57%); today that's dropped to 11% (Apple 89%)
http://t.co/YqA5kpQEHL
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One report says Sprint's stake is $200m, valuing Tidal at $600m (yes really). Tidal was valued at $250m in 2015.
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Really hoping that one day I wake up + my smell is back to normal (among other things). Long Covid suuuuucks. I'm prob preaching to the converted here but you do NOT want to get this, as you have no idea which way your own Covid journey will go. Vaccinate, vaccinate, vaccinate.
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All-stock deal, CEO is stepping down to do something as-yet unnamed at Msft, Xamarin head will lead GitHub. This was a missing piece in the Msft developer puzzle. Your move, Google and Amazon.
Microsoft has acquired GitHub for $7.5B in Microsoft stock by
@fredericl
and
@ingridlunden
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There is no silver bullet for self-driving cars, which are complex and will take years to get to proper Level 5 autonomy. But Broadmann17 is developing the kind of tech, a complement to Lidar, that will help make them a reality.
Brodmann17 nabs $11M for its automotive computer vision tech that runs on any CPU by
@ingridlunden
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Lyft still makes a big loss ($1b in 2018). An IPO is one route to how outsized 'startups' can continue to scale: bring in more outside investors that believe in the long-term promise it will eventually be able to pay a dividend (or continue to trade shares w/those who do).
Lyft sets $62-68 price range for its IPO to raise $2B, will trade as LYFT on Nasdaq by
@ingridlunden
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Huge news. Stripe's largest acquisition, and a big exit (the biggest?)in the Nigerian tech scene. Says a lot abt where growth will be coming from in next 10-30 yrs, and Stripe's ambitions. Coming at such a critical time in Nigeria, too. tip
@Techmeme
Stripe acquires Nigeria's Paystack for $200M+ to expand into the African continent by
@ingridlunden
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Holy moly. BioNTech just released its Q1 results. Revenues of €2 billion vs €27.7 million a year ago. What a difference a global pandemic vaccine makes.
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Absolutely shit year ending with my family (including me) getting COVID, but really liked that drone and light show London put on. That’s 2020 in a nutshell. Hell punctuated with small mercies and miracles.
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Vimeo is a useful platform for ppl to publish / control distribution of streamed videos if they want an alternative to YouTube. With the Magisto acquisition, it's beefing up those features w/ video creation and editing tools right on-site. Useful + timely additions.
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New PR low! PR just hung up on me while I was explaining why I couldn't cover what she was pitching... (It was yesterday's news for a start; she was pitching it as if it were fresh today.) I gather some journalists can be quite abrupt...is that why she felt she could be rude?
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Update: My daughter Eve's surgery went well, but the recovery is long and difficult, especially immediately after the operation. Looks like I will continue to be out for most of this week. Thanks for your patience and understanding.
And with that... I'm not working for the rest of the week. Currently in hospital w/my brave and beautiful daughter who had a major operation yesterday to fix significant scoliosis. She has had absolutely stellar care here in London. Thank you NHS.
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Big scoop from Jon and me... Lyft has acquired a startup called Blue Vision Labs in the UK, its first to fuel its autonomous car efforts, and launched its 1st Level 5 (the program, not the AV level) car. tip
@Techmeme
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A year after LinkedIn announced Talent Insights, it's finally being rolling out. It's LI's first move into business intelligence, and part of its bigger play on building an enterprise software biz based around/on its data trove of nearly 600m professional profiles.
LinkedIn steps into business intelligence with the launch of Talent Insights by
@ingridlunden
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@losangelista
@deray
In vegas at CES a woman took my laptop in a grubby bag while at a VIP John Legend show. I tracked her with ‘find my’ on my phone to the limo pick up far from the venue and got it back off her as she schmoozed ppl there. Felt absolutely triumphant.
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Founders: if you think (or have been advised to think) it's smart to evade the question 'who do you see as your competitors' by saying you don't have any, it's not.
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Breaking this story was one of my bigger scoops last year. Now it's all done and dusted and I'm very curious to see what Apple plans to do with it next. Many fun possibilities, as you can see with all the interesting little services Apple's been rolling out in iOS.
Apple closes its Shazam acquisition and says the music recognition app will soon become ad free by
@ingridlunden
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It was just weeks ago that MSQRD was rumored to have been acquired by Apple for $117m. Turned out to be Facebook
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Such an interesting startup. Founder tells me the inspiration for it was the use of 'golden hearing' at bell labs, blind engineers who could diagnose faults on lines by listening to dial tones. We don't give acoustics enough credit in our visual society. tip
@Techmeme
Pindrop raises $90M to bring its voice-fraud prevention to IoT devices, and Europe by
@ingridlunden
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@superglaze
They definitely did not do their research before proceeding. Wrong icons to eff with when it comes to this stuff.
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Sizeable round for education-meets-messaging startup ClassDojo, at a big valuation. Lots of potential here and it's seizing it with very strong word-of-mouth growth. Worth watching if and how its new subscription strategy around home education pays off. tip
@Techmeme
ClassDojo, an app to help teachers and parents communicate better, raises $35M by
@ingridlunden
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Even when Twitter does the right thing, it still feels like a mess. This is long overdue and took shaming on Capitol Hill, and imposing requirements for more scrutiny, to finally get over the line. That's not how it should work.
Alex Jones and Infowars permanently suspended from Twitter and Periscope after new content violations by
@ingridlunden
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Chalk up one more dishonest PR firm to my list of those who intentionally withhold information about giving different embargo times to different outlets. Such an annoying start to the day and such a waste of time in a busy week.
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Biggest tech deal in UK history has now closed Softbank acquired ARM Holdings for £24B ($32 billion)
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Volunteering again in the vaccine clinic at where my daughter just got her jab
@LewishamAt
from
@DriSeb
!
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P2P champion BitTorrent tackles the web browser
http://t.co/f7hGx6KaLD
Serverless browser Project Maelstrom opens for alpha testers
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I took the time to do a massive cull of my inbox, which still has 89k unread messages but you have no idea how many I had before then. It's not inbox zero, but it's hugely liberating. I'm now trying (trying!) to stay on top of this jerk called email.
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Stripe says 20% of all startups that incorporate through Delaware use Atlas to do so; now it's expanding Atlas to founders opting for the LLC route. Carving out a way of making inroads with co's that can be its payment customers down the line.
Stripe expands its Atlas startup service to let founders form LLCs for $500 by
@ingridlunden
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MoviePass's parent's stock has dropped 99.2% (!) from its 52-week high on the back of Q's about how it operates. Now, it's announced yet another route to staying afloat as the boat continues to rock. Essentially running a startup as a public company is... tough.
MoviePass parent says it may sell up to $1.2B in equity and debt to finance operations and growth by
@ingridlunden
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You still can’t edit a tweet. You still can’t edit a tweet. You still can’t edit a tweet. You still can’t edit a tweet. You still can’t edit a tweet. You still can’t edit a tweet. You still can’t edit a tweet. You still can’t edit a tweet. You still can’t edit a tweet. You still
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Travel services are projected to be a $1 trillion biz by 2022, so co's helping connect the dots better between buyers + sellers are also rising. Sojern's valuation is upwards of $280m. But they have been profitable for years, so I'm guessing it's higher. tip
@Techmeme
Sojern raises another $120M led by TCV to expand its travel marketing platform by
@ingridlunden
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Super cool company and general effort to improve job prospects for people like... me. (Well not me specifically, but ppl like me.)
The Mom Project, a job site for moms returning to work, nabs $8M from Initialized and more by
@ingridlunden
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Encouraging example of a startup tackling an actual problem, in this case a critical shortage of healthcare talent. Potentially big area, and Coursera is positioning itself as an early mover to diversify from tech and business tip
@Techmeme
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HELLO TWITTER. A brief break from tech for a little request. I'm cycling (w/husband) to Brighton from London. We're raising money for the British Heart Foundation. I'm fairly out of shape (b/c blogger) but doing it anyway. Please donate if you can.
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London making big strides in startup growth with $680m+ in funding in Q1. Still pretty small compared to U.S.
http://t.co/xFscFIA0nJ
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Also, this is more than three times the co's last valuation. It's one key example of how in the tech world, buying influence can still command a huge premium, since GitHub has yet to turn a profit but occupies a cornerstone in the developer world.
Microsoft has acquired GitHub for $7.5B in Microsoft stock by
@fredericl
and
@ingridlunden
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And another scoop. Very under the radar company but one to watch I think. They have a curious but convincing business model, a very quirky CEO with a crazy good track record, and are tackling something that everyone sort of hates.
Customer service ‘behavioral pairing’ startup Afiniti quietly raised $130M at a $1.6B valuation by
@ingridlunden
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Sprint was on stage w/ Tidal when it relaunched under Jay-Z & co in '15. Never elaborated on what they were doing. Now this. tip
@techmeme
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I'm going to the re-opening of the new Apple Store in London today. If you're so inclined... I'll be broadcasting live from there on FB.
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Amazing progress for UiPath. Been covering since the start, and worth only $110m 2 years ago. Unlike a lot of consumer fluff (whose valuations also ratchet), this is the real deal, w/ revenues, big customers + groundbreaking tech. (Also: Woot to Romanian startups) tip
@Techmeme
UiPath nabs $568M at a $7B valuation to bring robotic process automation to the front office by
@ingridlunden
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Of all the things to change. Does Favorite -> Like and Star -> Heart seem kind of like tidying a room while the fire alarm's going off?
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A sea of rubbish is being created out of nefarious and/or lame uses of all the data generated by our digital world. But here is a startup doing something actually useful and good with it. We need more startups like RapidSOS.
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Broke my left hand last night. It sucks, but dealing with it has been a reminder of how amazing the NHS can be. We are so lucky in the UK.
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Don't know how many paid 'Pro' users SlideShare had but now it will have none. All premium features become free
http://t.co/rirUOQnRMm
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Blink and you miss it. Snapchat quietly confirmed a $485m raise just as the world was signing off for New Years
http://t.co/aqBI3yOcw2
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For me, one takeaway of all the clones that FB makes + then shuts down is that these just don't work. Its most successful efforts outside main newsfeed have either been organic early moves of its own (eg Messenger, poss Workplace) or already-juggernauty acquisitions (Instagram).
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Timely news fr BitTorrent. It's opened its 'paygate' model to all musicians, filmmakers, authors who get a 90% cut
http://t.co/4rSOMBfzcK
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Yikes - Spotify's stock is down almost 9% after posting these numbers. All-time low of $137/share. Full story below.
Spotify posts $1.35B in Q3 sales; MAUs up 28% to 191M with 87M paying users by
@ingridlunden
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To me, one clear sign that a startup might be in trouble is that it suddenly "goes into crypto," having had nothing to do with it ever before.
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Confirmed with a source v. close to Wiliot that its valuation is $120m post-money. Interesting development in the worlds of chipmaking and alternative (ambient) power.
Wiliot nabs $30M from Amazon, Avery Dennison, Samsung for a chip that runs on power from ambient radio frequencies by
@ingridlunden
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This btw is a seed round. Biggest to date for a startup out of Nigeria. Also impressive.
Nigeria's Kuda raises $10M to be the mobile-first challenger bank for Africa by
@ingridlunden
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To me, the most scandalous thing about the college admissions scandal is that it took some high-profile youtubers and famous people to get ensnared for ppl to suddenly get outraged at the inconsistencies around admissions at competitive schools.
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Yep, sad that
@sohear
has left our team, and even though I have to admit I'm relieved it's not to a competitor, it bums me out when talented ppl leave journalism. I wish him all the best in scratching his entrepreneurial itch. Nice profile.
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Vaccines open up to Gen Xers in UK, and the tsunami of people who are both anxious and very digitally native rush to book online and end up crashing the whole thing. NHS person just told me it's unlikely to be working properly until after 5pm today.
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Well, SoftBank and Tiger G. have placed their bet on which European neobank they believe will rule the roost...On paper Revolut's now the largest fintech in the UK, and one of the biggest globally. tip
@Techmeme
Revolut confirms a fresh $800M in funding at a $33B valuation to supercharge its financial services superapp by
@ingridlunden
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You write one small thing related to cryptocurrency and you are heretofore referred to as a 'crypto influencer.' No hype, no overselling in this market. None at all!
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You may have seen this from others. Sharing it anyway. My good friend and talented colleague
@SarahPerezTC
has had a terrible, unthinkable thing happen to her overnight. Please do help her if you can.
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Don't you just hate it when you see something good on Twitter but before you can properly register it, it disappears? How am I ever going to find it? Who said it? What did they say again?
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Tragedy. Tony was brilliant, really one of a kind.
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E-commerce sales in the US have exceeded $1.5 billion so far this Thanksgiving Day, up 17% on last year.
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And before you know it, Google has entered another vertical search marketplace.
http://t.co/08AM1fcncv
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"If you look hard enough, you can find it": PR answer when I asked him, "How exactly did you get my number?" I guess that since I do this all the time too, I can't really fault him, right? 😬
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Final numbers for Thanksgiving e-commerce are in: a record $3.7 billion was spent online in the US. Amazon a big winner, and mobile was just over 1/3 of all sales (also a notable rise). tip
@Techmeme
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Rakuten TV has 7M users (compare that to Netflix's 139M). Has it missed the boat on the swing to video streaming? It's expanding to 42 countries, getting hot buttons on remotes + doubling down on a la carte to prove it has not. Interview w/ CEO here too. tip
@Techmeme
Rakuten TV expands to 42 European countries, gets direct button on Samsung, LG, Philips and Hisense remotes by
@ingridlunden
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To me, Facebook hiring former UK deputy prime minister Nick Clegg as its head of PR says everything that is wrong about both Facebook and UK politics right now.
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Very productive year for productivity app Asana. tip
@Techmeme
Asana, a work management platform, nabs $50M growth round at a $1.5B valuation by
@ingridlunden
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Bing is tiny in China, less than 350K users, vs over 400M for bigger search engines in the country, but Microsoft is a huge company. Seems like a symbolic gesture, given all the other developments we've seen.
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A Canadian unicorn (in Canadian dollars). I think there is going to be much more consolidation in travel, given the ambitions/strides of Airbnb, and what we've already seen in the space. tip
@Techmeme
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Uber has confirmed to me that it's a $40b valuation with this new round.
http://t.co/tteq4U6hZn
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I'm really looking forward to Facebook's Clubhouse clone. It should absolutely be attached to Groups, and also to its Workplace platform for business users. I also think Slack should build one.
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Huge funding fr PayPal and Dragoneer in Latin America, following on from the SoftBank news last week. And if you're wondering how large startups like Lyft and Uber might raise more $$ once they go public, could this be is an instructive transaction?
PayPal to invest $750M, and Dragoneer $100M into MercadoLibre, Argentina’s e-commerce powerhouse by
@ingridlunden
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Every development I see on the TikTok acquisition story is increasingly bizarre. Imagine Oracle owning it. Imagine WALMART, or Walmart plus MSFT. You can see why the CEO wanted out. What say could you possibly have in these negotiations with old, oversized giants?
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Google mobile search now warns when a site has Flash, other unreadable content (+ why I think this is significant)
http://t.co/K72QzsAPNe
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We interviewed Josh Wardle, the creator of Wordle. Lovely bloke, interesting conversation. (And no, he's not raised a round. Not yet! Maybe never?) Take a look!
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Scoop fr Tuesday I've now had confirmed by 2 more sources. Corel once sparred w/ Microsoft. Now, as a profitable but much smaller co, it's quietly playing smart consolidator. Parallels is a significant part of the virtualization landscape.
Source: Canada’s Corel is acquiring virtualization specialist Parallels in an all-cash deal by
@ingridlunden
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SoundCloud may be raising $150m, but it's also building ways to generate $$ itself
http://t.co/htjxCyi1aC
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It's about time LatAm got more attention. This fund was rumored earlier this year, but final fund size is about 2x the amt ppl thought it would be. Big win for SoftBank COO Claure, who will be running it. Notable turn of focus away from Asia.
SoftBank launches the Innovation Fund, committing $2B to invest in Latin America by
@ingridlunden
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Major guilt over this whole homeworking/homeschooling set up. "LET ME FOCUS. JUST LET. ME. FOCUS," just came out of my mouth when one kid wandered in here to excitedly show me an essay. Work/life balance takes on a new meaning these days.
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Hyundai's doubling down on the next generation of transportation. On the same day as its Ola investment, Yandex said the two are working on self-driving car tech. 1st deal of this kind for Yandex. tip
@techmeme
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An impressive founder in
@TopeAwotona
- great company focused on a simple but significant issue, huge round for a co that grew from nothing into a profitable venture on virtually no outside funding.
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If Kafka had lived to write stories about app developers, he'd have clipped this one for reference
http://t.co/6dVw8EBlpr
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Much ado over Adobe's Figma deal=big opportunities for new entrants. This open source approach bringing designers + developers together speaks volumes abt the evolutions of design & OS overall (+adoption's skyrocketed and Figma's ex-COO's investing 👀)
Penpot inks $8M, as signups for its open source spin on Figma jump 5600% after Adobe's $20B acquisition by
@ingridlunden
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Building software for air conditioning contractors is the equivalent of normcore in the tech world. Huge raise, which my smart colleague
@jshieber
called ages ago. tip
@Techmeme
ServiceTitan raises $165M for its home services software, now valued at $1.65B by
@ingridlunden
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This isn't the year of "Alexa in everything" at CES (that was 2017) but here's 1 integration worth noting. It's just an initial step (Alexa controls console, not gameplay) but makes you wonder how/if Amazon wd ever build an integrated gaming experience of its own. tip
@Techmeme
Razer integrates Amazon’s Alexa voice controls and haptic feedback into its gaming platform by
@ingridlunden
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