Marqeta acquires fintech infrastructure startup Power Finance for $275M

TechCrunch Newsletter

By Christine Hall and Haje Jan Kamps Monday, January 30, 2023

Kicking off the week, we've been thoroughly enjoying Runa Sandvik's story about how U.S. police use digital data to prosecute abortions in our post-Roe-v.-Wade world. The TL;DR is that healthcare in the U.S. is a weird world, and you should use end-to-end encrypted messages if you're going to DM your friends about things that are potentially illegal.  — Christine and Haje Image Credits: PM Images / Getty Images

The TechCrunch Top 3 "Power"ing up Marqeta's portfolio: Marqeta made its first acquisition, securing Power Finance in a $275 million all-cash deal, Mary Ann reports. She writes that this move gives Marqeta, which focuses on debit and prepaid cards, some new capabilities in the way of credit products. What was the intent?: In this week's The Station newsletter, Rebecca and Kirsten have the latest on Tesla, writing about what happened when Elon Musk took the stand related to that class-action securities fraud trial. Here's "One Piece" of a new Netflix series you shouldn't ignore: If you are a fan of the anime series "One Piece," you might enjoy Netflix's attempt at making it a live-action series. Lauren has more.

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Startups and VC "I can't explain it. It's weird," Alphonzo "Phonz" Terrell said to Amanda. After losing his job at Twitter when Elon Musk took over, the former global head of Social and Editorial didn't want to rest — he wanted to build. "Coming straight out of it, I was just like, 'Oh, it's time. It's time to build, whether we get support or not.’" Now he’s raised just short of $3 million to build a competitor to Twitter. Speaking of alternatives to Twitter, Aisha and Taylor took to the internet to find the best Twitter alternatives worth checking out. Ultimately they conclude that there isn't, and will probably never be, a one-for-one replacement for Twitter. Oh, and good news for gaming nerds after a lot of really silly missteps: Amanda writes how the 403-page Dungeons & Dragons game system is now licensed under Creative Commons. And here's a handful more, because we love ya: That's a lot of walls, y'all: Connie reports that Fifth Wall, focused on real estate tech and managing $3.2 billion, looks to eat up even more of its market. Chaining blocks to other blocks: Jacquelyn had two back-to-back crypto stories today — Crypto security startup Hypernative raises $9 million, and Sovereign Labs collected $7.4 million to help scale blockchains. Lemme send myself a note: Ivan explores Stashpad, a notepad for devs with a "DM to yourself" interface. To da moon: Manish reports that Walmart-backed PhonePe's nine-month 2022 revenue surged to $234 million. Sharing is caring: Raylo raises $136 million to build out its gadget lease-and-reuse “fintech” platform, reports Ingrid.

What do recent changes to state taxes mean for US SaaS startups? For SaaS startups, tax time can create a conundrum. Some states regard software-as-a-service products as, um, services, while others classify them as, er, products. “There's also the issue of bundling on its own,” according to startup tax accountant Ardy Esmaeili. “SaaS might not be taxed, but it will be when paired with hardware.” To help founders better understand their liability, Esmaeili shares tips on how to identify a company’s physical nexus and lists multiple SaaS categories that states are likely to tax. “Engage an expert as early as you can,” he writes. “Don't think you won't have to worry about it yet, because waiting can have big consequences down the line.” Three more from the TC+ team: Don't call it a comeback: Connie wonders whether venture funding is already back. You're welcome, I'm late: Natasha M explores the latecomer advantage in startups. For you, special price: Where should sales sit in product-led companies? wonders Anna. 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! Read More Image Credits: Daniela Simona Temneanu / EyeEm / Getty Images

Big Tech Inc. Manish reports that Manu Jain is the latest Xiaomi executive to leave. This might sting a bit for the company because Jain was the one who set up and scaled the smartphone maker's presence in India. All right, now here you are, checking all the security boxes, getting your two-factor authentication set up, and along comes a hacker — albeit paid by Meta — that finds a bug, which allows someone to bypass that two-factor authentication on Facebook and Instagram. I guess it's good they caught it, but ugh! Lorenzo has more. And we have five more for you: Grocery game: Amazon raised the threshold for free grocery delivery, now charging fees on Fresh orders under $150, Aisha reports. Activating investors: Ron writes that some Salesforce board changes may be a signal that the company is okay with all of the recent activist investor moves. EV to EV: Ford is not going to let Tesla have all the fun. The carmaker is meeting Tesla's electric vehicle price reduction with its own discounts for the all-electric Mustang Mach-E, Kirsten writes. Sparking new layoffs: Electric vehicle company Arrival is cutting its workforce by 50% in what Kirsten reports is a third restructuring effort. Take Note: Instagram's Notes feature, which are short posts of up to 60 characters that include text and emojis and appear above your profile photo, is expanding to Europe and Japan. Aisha has more.

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Stripe responds to report that it seeks to raise $2B with a terse 'no comment'

TechCrunch Newsletter

By Christine Hall and Haje Jan Kamps Friday, January 27, 2023

Well, it's Friday again. And as the Equity pod team noted today, "You could be Wasted and not even know it." — Christine and Haje Image Credits: mustafaU / Getty Images

The TechCrunch Top 3 The search for more money: Mary Ann follows up on yesterday's story about Stripe setting a deadline to go public with some additional information that Stripe had reportedly tried raising additional capital at a decreased valuation. Look for more on this developing story in Mary Ann's Interchange newsletter, which comes out on Sundays. If you don't already get it in your inbox, click here. No music for you: Google displayed its musical chops and now won't share it with the world, Kyle writes. The search engine giant created an artificial intelligence system that can generate music from text descriptions, but he reports that "fearing the risks, has no immediate plans to release it." Maybe if we all say something nice to them… From angel to the board room: Twitter co-founder Biz Stone is the newest board member of audiovisual startup Chroma, a company Stone began investing in two years ago. Sarah has more.

Startups and VC Kano, the venture-backed U.K. startup known for its build-your-own computer kits and software for teaching coding and associated STEM skills, has accused Warner Bros. of copying one of its products and infringing on its intellectual property, Paul reports. By any measure, Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff has been a successful executive. He helped build Salesforce from the ground up, starting in an apartment in San Francisco in 1999 and eventually erecting Salesforce Tower, the tallest building in the city, Ron reports. He took the idea of running software in the cloud and grew it into the de facto way to deliver software at a time when most companies offered software in boxes or on-prem seat licenses. As activist investors target Salesforce, what's next for the CRM giant? (TC+) And we have five more for you: Here comes the space train: Haje reports that Atomos tows a $16 million load of funding to create tugboats in space. I pee what they did there: Christine reports that Starling Medical's new urine-testing device turns your toilet into a health tracker. A peek behind the curtains: Tage breaks down how African startups raised venture capital in 2022. Here's how to get customers: Matt invites you to come hear the right way to acquire customers with Cube and Mayfield on TechCrunch Live. More money to reduce fraud: Inscribe bags $25 million to fight financial fraud with AI, reports Kyle.

4 practical steps for using no-code to evolve your prototype to an MVP Forget about dogs: No-code development tools can be a nontechnical founder’s best friend. Building a minimum viable product once required engineering and design ability. Now, bootstrapping founders can iterate without developers to keep costs and extend their runway. “Instead of getting caught up trying to design the perfect and complete MVP release all at once, try to deliver value as quickly as possible and continuously improve your prototype,” advises Katherine Kostereva, CEO and managing partner of Creatio. She shares four tactics for transforming prototypes into usable products via no-code: Embrace an everyday delivery approach Proper scoping and decomposition Carefully manage and decouple dependencies Invest in continuous deployment automation Three more from the TC+ team: Gewoon, gezellig: Haje spoke to HRH Prince Constantijn to figure out what's going on in the Dutch startup scene. That's a Lot of Dollars: Energy transition investments hit $1.1 trillion — with a T — last year, Tim reported. A near-perfect deck: Haje finds very little to complain about in his most recent Pitch Deck Teardown, of Orange's $2.5 million seed deck. 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! Read More Image Credits: Luis Cagiao Photography / Getty Images

Big Tech Inc. Apparently, "AI that can generate art, text and more is in for a reckoning," Kyle writes today. He's been following a class-action lawsuit against Microsoft, GitHub and OpenAI that "accuses them of violating copyright law by allowing Copilot, a code-generating AI system trained on billions of lines of public code, to regurgitate licensed code snippets without providing credit." Kyle lays it all out for you and even notes that cases like these against generative AI are just the beginning. If you've been enjoying HBO's new zombie thriller "The Last of Us," you’ll be able to enjoy it a little longer. The show got picked up for a second season after delighting over 22 million viewers, Lauren writes. Here's your Friday five: Gobbling up your information: Uber Eats has a new feature that shows you how much of your information is shared with delivery people, Aisha reports. Lock and key: Speaking of features that protect what someone sees, Chrome for Android now lets you lock your incognito session, Ivan writes. Texting with Walmart: Sarah tests out Walmart's new "Text to Shop" feature that has a few bugs to work out — wait until you see what happens when she tries to add La Croix to her cart. Taking the dating helm: Will Wu, former Snap VP of product, found his "Match" joining the parent company of popular dating apps as its new CTO, which was one of the changes made when Match restructured its executive leadership, Aisha reports. Buyer's remorse: After buying shares in African e-commerce company Jumia, investors are now rethinking that decision — for better and worse, Tage writes.

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

TechCrunch Newsletter

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 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: Nebia finds a new home: Harri writes that Mark Cuban's bidet brand buys shower startup that wooed Tim Cook. The dragon watching its hoard: NEA now manages over $25 billion in assets — oh, and it's looking beyond venture, Natasha M reports. Them's some meaty shroomies: Mushroom protein company Meati Foods opens 'mega' facility as it closes $22 million in new funding, Christine reports. Kenya in the lead: Annie reports that among the African VC market, Kenya's growth was strongest. Clean tech and e-commerce pulled in most of the funding. This meeting may be recorded for transcription purposes: Supernormal raises $10 million to automatically transcribe and summarize meetings, Kyle reports.

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: Crypto cull comeback: Laid off from your crypto job? Here's what founders are looking for in new talent, Jacquelyn writes. Elucidating European edtech: Smaller rounds and fewer deals, but more angel activity, writes Rhys. Predicting proptech: Investors predict slower growth in 2023, writes Karan. 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! Read More 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: Pretty bird: Peacock reports over 20 million subscribers as of the fourth quarter, but its losses also widened, Lauren writes. Substack-ing new features: New features over at Substack include 'private Substacks' that readers can request to subscribe to, Aisha writes. Wally World infusion: Manish reports Walmart is going all in with another $2.5 billion investment in India’s e-commerce and payments markets. Have you shopped here?: Zack lists a number of overseas knock-off apparel stores that exposed 330,000 customer credit cards and other personal information.

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