Latest and Hotest Technology Updates

Robinhood caps a wild week for new funding, Coinbase is going public and Johnson & Johnson reveals new vaccine trial data. This is your Daily Crunch for January 29, 2021.

The big story: Robinhood raises $1B

I know the newsletter has been dominated by Robinhood and stock market news for the past few days but, well, so have the headlines.

The latest news is that after reportedly tapping its credit lines, Robinhood raised $1 billion in new funding from existing investors. It seems the company needed the money in order to meet regulatory minimums and other requirements tied to users’ trading activity.

Meanwhile, the SEC has issued a statement that doesn’t specifically mention Robinhood or GameStop by name, but it says that “extreme stock price volatility has the potential to expose investors to rapid and severe losses" that could "undermine market confidence.”

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The tech giants

You can now give Facebook's Oversight Board feedback on the decision to suspend Trump — The board says the point of the public comment process is to incorporate "diverse perspectives" from third parties who wish to share research that might inform their decisions.

Uber's Autocab acquisition gets eyed by UK competition watchdog — Autocab makes booking and dispatch software for the taxi and private-hire vehicle industry.

Startups, funding and venture capital

Coinbase is going public via direct listing — The company has raised over $540 million in funding as a private company.

Firehawk Aerospace extends seed funding to $2.5M with $1.2M from Harlow Capital — Firehawk has developed a new kind of hybrid rocket fuel that greatly enhances rocket launch safety, cost and transportation using additive manufacturing.

SoftBank earmarks $100M for Miami-based startups — The fund will back companies that are in Miami or plan to move there.

Advice and analysis from Extra Crunch

Customer advisory boards are a gold mine for startup brand champions — Some considerations to make certain your customer advisory board is a success.

Rising African venture investment powers fintech, clean tech bets in 2020 — The Exchange looks at a report from Briter Bridges, a research group that focuses on Africa’s private capital market.

Subscription-based pricing is dead: Smart SaaS companies are shifting to usage-based models — That’s according to Open VP of Growth Kyle Povar.

(Extra Crunch is our membership program, which helps founders and startup teams get ahead. You can sign up here.)

Everything else

Johnson & Johnson's COVID-19 vaccine is 85% effective against severe cases, and 66% effective overall per trial data — Johnson & Johnson's vaccine is a single shot rather than a two-course treatment.

‘Frozen' CG snow and crash-test cadavers offer hints for 60-year-old Russian mystery deaths — New research uses simulation techniques from multiple eras to advance what is perhaps the least implausible explanation for a tragic mystery.

Reap big benefits when you attend both TC Early Stage 2021 events — TechCrunch Early Stage is a two-day virtual bootcamp that gives early founders access to leading experts.

• Demand Generation Manager at Quorum (Washington, D.C., USA)
• Software Engineer at SG Cap Trading (Chicago, IL, USA)
• C++ Software Engineering Manager at SG Cap Trading (Chicago, IL, USA)
• Director of Media Relations at SalientMG (New York, NY, USA)
• Sr. Rails Developer - HealPay at HealPay (Web Applications) (USA)

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The GameStop stock saga continues, Apple releases more details about its privacy changes and Qualtrics goes public. This is your Daily Crunch for January 28, 2021.

The big story: Robinhood restricts GameStop trading

Robinhood has responded to an upsurge in retail investors buying shares in companies like GameStop, AMC and Blockbuster by restricting trading on “certain securities” to “position closing only,” meaning that users can no longer buy more of the companies’ stocks. (It says it will allow “limited buys” tomorrow.)

This comes after the current buying spree — targeting stocks shorted by institutional investors and spurred by the WallStreetBets forum on Reddit — took Robinhood and Reddit to the top of the app charts.

Now, Robinhood is being hit with numerous 1-star reviews, and the move also attracted criticism from politicians on both sides of the aisle, with Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez describing it as “unacceptable” and Senator Ted Cruz tweeting, “Fully agree.”

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The tech giants

Apple's App Tracking Transparency feature will be enabled by default and arrive in 'early spring' on iOS — The plan is to launch these changes in early spring, with a version of the feature coming in the next iOS 14 beta release.

Qualtrics prices IPO at $30 per share, above its upgraded target range — The company sold 50.4 million shares in the process.

Twitter is already working on integrating newsletters on its site, following its Revue acquisition — It appears "Newsletters" will soon be the newest addition to Twitter's sidebar navigation.

Startups, funding and venture capital

Workday acquires employee feedback platform Peakon for $700M — Peakon says companies have used its platform’s weekly surveys to ask more than 153 million questions since inception six years ago.

Fintech darling Nubank raises blockbuster $400M Series G at $25B valuation — The fintech company now has 34 million customers.

Flowhaven raises $16M to evolve brand licensing management beyond emails and spreadsheets — The media licensing business is a massive market, but much of the work involved is still handled manually through emails and spreadsheets.

Advice and analysis from Extra Crunch

Thirteen investors say lifelong learning is taking edtech mainstream — As learners become more multi-layered and nuanced, so have the edtech companies that back them.

Talent and capital are shifting cybersecurity investors' focus away from Silicon Valley — Solving the cybersecurity problem will take more time and resources than we are currently allocating.

Mind the gap: E-commerce marketers should revise their TAM and SAM estimates — 2021 is going to be another glorious year for e-commerce.

(Extra Crunch is our membership program, which helps founders and startup teams get ahead. You can sign up here.)

Everything else

Smartphone sales slowed decline in Q4, with a big assist from Apple — The past year was, of course, a major blow to an industry already suffering a slide.

GM pledges to be carbon neutral by 2040 with zero tailpipe emission vehicles by 2035 — It's a big step for a company whose products are responsible for a large percentage of global greenhouse gas emissions.

UCLA is building a digital archive of mass incarceration with a new $3.6M grant — The "Archiving the Age of Mass incarceration" effort is being led by Kelly Lytle Hernandez, director of the university's Bunche Center for African American Studies.

• Director of Media Relations at SalientMG (New York, NY, USA)
• Sr. Rails Developer - HealPay at HealPay (Web Applications) (USA)
• Sr. Software Engineer (US - Remote) at Hip eCommerce (USA)
• Sr. QA Engineer - (Remote) at Hip eCommerce (Raleigh, NC, USA)
• Digital Ad Operations Manager at SEBPO (Marlton, New Jersey 08053, USA)

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Reddit users have some fun with the stock market, Facebook predicts advertising challenges and ByteDance is cutting jobs in India. This is your Daily Crunch for January 27, 2021.

The big story: GameStop becomes a meme stock

GameStop’s stock continued to climb today, along with Blockbuster and AMC — all stocks shorted by institutional investors. These gains were apparently driven by users in the r/WallStreetBets subreddit.

We’ve rounded up the fairly non-committal statements from various trading apps like Robinhood about how they’re responding to this volatility.

And Lucas Matney asks how this might affect cryptocurrencies: “For investors looking to have a good time or shoot the moon, meme stocks are a more fun place to be than crypto is.”

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The tech giants

Facebook predicts 'significant' obstacles to ad targeting and revenue in 2021 — While Facebook's fourth quarter earnings report included solid user and revenue numbers, the company sounded a note of caution for 2021.

SAP launches 'RISE with SAP,' a concierge service for digital transformation — RISE is a subscription service that combines a set of services and product offerings.

ByteDance is cutting jobs in India amid prolonged TikTok ban — The company employs more than 2,000 people in India.

Startups, funding and venture capital

SoftBank teams with home goods maker Iris Ohyama for new robotics venture — The newly formed Iris Robotics has set an extremely aggressive goal of $965 million in sales by 2025.

Literati raises $40M for its book club platform — CEO Jessica Ewing told me that she's trying to build the first "new, innovative bookseller" since Amazon launched 25 years ago.

Renewable investment wave continues as solar lending company Loanpal raises $800M — The $800 million commitment to Loanpal arrives alongside a flurry of climate commitments from some of the world's largest investors.

Advice and analysis from Extra Crunch

How two startups scaled to $50M ARR and beyond — The Exchange examines OwnBackup and Assembly.

Dear Sophie: How can I sponsor my mom and stepdad for green cards? — The latest “Dear Sophie," the advice column that answers immigration-related questions about working at technology companies.

Check out the amazing speakers joining us on Extra Crunch Live in February — We'll take a look at funding deals through the eyes of the founders and investors who made them happen.

(Extra Crunch is our membership program, which helps founders and startup teams get ahead. You can sign up here.)

Everything else

Battling algorithmic bias at TC Sessions: Justice — At TC Sessions: Justice on March 3, we're going to dive head-first into data discrimination, algorithmic bias and how to ensure a more just future.

• Sr. Rails Developer - HealPay (Remote, USA) at HealPay (Web Applications) (Ann Arbor, MI, USA)
• Sr. Software Engineer (US - Remote) at Hip eCommerce (USA)
• Sr. QA Engineer - (Remote) at Hip eCommerce (Raleigh, NC, USA)
• Digital Ad Operations Manager at SEBPO (Marlton, New Jersey 08053, USA)
• Software Developer at ESKER INC (Madison, WI, USA)

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