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Average week? Rather medium weak! Okay, terrible pun, but we have some energy in this heat wave today, so it makes sense.
oh! And good news, by the way, we’re offering 15% off Disrupt tickets (excluding online tickets or show tickets) for you, our loyal Daily Crunch readers. Use promo code ‘DC’ to claim your discount!
I’ll see you tomorrow! — Christine and Hadje
TechCrunch’s Top 3
- Slumdog $5-illonnaire: Landa is the latest startup to raise venture capital, in this case $33 million, to democratize real estate ownership, Mary Ann write. His approach allows people to invest in the real estate sector known for providing wealth for generations, but in a cheaper, more fractional way, and in some cases for as little as $5 initially.
- Clicking, crackling and . . . swish: Despite countless news and new revenue streams we reported on Snap right here in this newsletter, Evan Spiegel said the words no tech executive wants to hear right now: “restructuring our business.” Amanda reports that this unfortunately means a 20% reduction in staff.
- Obstacles abroad: Amazon is facing tough competition in India and Manish reports that pose some challenges to the e-commerce giant’s ability to gain a more prominent foothold in the country.
Startups and VCs
This week, Hadje went deep with a founder who creates digital license plates. He thought that building an easy-to-copy hardware product in an incredibly highly regulated, winner-take-all industry would be a total nightmare, but when it works, it works and it’s fascinating to see Reviver built a company, one license plate at a time.
Populus, the San Francisco-based transportation data startup, got its start when the shared-scooter craze took hold and cities scrambled to understand how infrastructure was being used by fleets of small vehicles. Now Populus co-founder and CEO Regina Clewlow is repositioning the company to take advantage of another hot opportunity: curbs and traffic jams, Rebecca write. This is a really good read from TechCrunch’s transportation desk with a “power of great hubs” twist.
Raisin’ money, raisin’ hell:
Creating a XaaS Customer Success Strategy that drives growth
Providing better service to users than they expected can literally save a software startup. In one study, companies that spent 10% of annual revenue on customer success achieved peak net recurring revenue.
“Companies most often apply two or more customer success archetypes,” according to TC+ contributors Rachel Parrinello and John Stamos. “Typically, these vary by customer segment, business vs. technical focus, and sales movement focus: adoption, renewal, bidding and cross-selling.”
If you’re interested in optimizing revenue through CS, read the rest for a full overview of the job design methodology because “companies shouldn’t design their customer success roles in a vacuum.”
(TechCrunch+ is our membership program that helps founders and startup teams get ahead. You can register here.)
Big Tech Inc.
Social media and privacy don’t often go hand in hand, especially when kids can already see a lot on the internet. Twitter got into it when it reportedly tried to monetize adult content in an attempt to compete with OnlyFans. It later removed the program when it was found that its system could not “detect child sexual abuse material and non-consensual nudity at scale.” Amanda write. California lawmakers, meanwhile, are wasting no time moving forward to enact it online protection of children’s privacy nationwide where there are none at the federal level, Taylor reports.
- Step on the accelerator, the EV pedal: Toyota accelerates its investments in American electric vehiclesand will invest about $3.8 billion in this initiative, up from the original $1.3 billion, Jacqueline write.
- Redeem NFTs: Event organizers working with Ticketmaster can now issue ticket-related NFTs on the stream Ivan reports.
- It’s almost fall, and that means another Apple event: Brian is the skinny on all the things you need to know about Apple’s iPhone 14 event on September 7.
- New satellite on the block: Royal Caribbean is going “all-in on satellite service” and will equip its fleet of ships with Starlink Internet, Devin write.