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Today, Hadje is particularly excited that he was able to convince the TechCrunch Plus team to allow him to publish one of his Pitch Deck Teardowns without the payment system. If you are not a TC+ subscriber and are curious what criticism of a $65 million funding round at a $1.7 billion valuation looks like it’s your lucky day. Besides the freebie, it might be a particularly good time to subscribe as we’re running a TC+ Annual Membership Labor Day Sale.
We are also going to Minneapolis soon and just posted the agenda for TechCrunch’s free virtual event which was to be called “All Eyez on Mi(nnesota)”. with apologies of Tupac.
Happy rest of Thursday and know that Friday is so close we can almost smell the sweet smell of the long Labor Day weekend. Ahhhhh. — Christine and Hadje
TechCrunch’s Top 3
- When the doorbell rings: Ring has a shiny new feature called Ring Intercom, designed to pair with existing apartment intercom systems. Brian there is more.
- Jump in rating: Fintech fraud fighter Alloy is now worth $1.55 billion after banking $52 million in new funding, Mary Ann reports.
- Sharing is concern: Kyle spoke with Slack CEO Steve Wood about the company’s new automation features that make workflows more shareable and discoverable by other Slack users, and where the company goes from here.
Startups and VCs
The Reddit acquisition continues this morning with news that the company is bringing the company’s in-house audience contextualization technology Spiketrap. Terms of the deal were not disclosed, but Reddit says Spiketrap’s AI-based contextual analysis and tools will help Reddit improve in areas such as evaluating ad quality and will improve predictive models to power auto-bidding, Sarah reports.
A few more, now with Moar Emoji!
9 strategies to help you overcome your fear of fundraising
Image Credits: Vicky Jauron, Babylon and Beyond Photography (opens in a new window) / Getty Images
Pleasure cruises usually begin with a ship-wide safety briefing, where passengers don life jackets and learn what to do in case of an emergency.
Likewise, there’s no reason to fear raising money to start a new venture, but founders should have a healthy respect for a process that’s not entirely under their control.
“Any change is an opportunity to create leverage, and a downturn is no exception,” wrote Masha Bucher, founder and general partner of early-stage venture capital firm Day One Ventures.
In this TC+ post, she discusses the current environment and shares “actionable tips for closing pre-stages to Series B rounds.”
(TechCrunch+ is our membership program that helps founders and startup teams get ahead. You can register here.)
Big Tech Inc.
Yesterday we reported on Instant dismissal 20% from its workforce, which apparently included the entire Zenly team. We enjoyed ourselves today gender‘sand RomainDay two’s look at what happened to the social mapping app that was acquired by Snap in 2017and perhaps to answer the larger question: “Zenly is still extremely popular, so why is Snap shutting it down?“
- Yo-ho, yo-ho, it’s a trading life for me: Ivan is weak on news that Disney+ is looking to have an in-app commerce feature which will allow users to scan a QR code and be taken to a site with branded merchandise.
- Taking a position: Group of Googlers keep talking against their employer over the $1.2 billion Nimbus project contract and fears that Google’s technology would add to digital surveillance in the occupied Palestinian territories, Amanda reports.
- Edit yourself: Later this month, Twitter Blue subscribers will be among the first to get a chance to try Twitter’s new feature which will allow them to edit their tweets, Ivan write.
- Label: Instacart acquires Eversightan AI-based pricing and promotions company. Aisha says that this pairing will “give retailers and CPG brands access to new individualized and personalized pricing tools.”
- To the moon: Or indeed to the International Space Station. NASA pays $1.4 billion to SpaceX in exchange for five more astronaut transport flights, Aria write.