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Hello and welcome to the Daily Crunch of January 26, 2022! Today we have surveillance robots, Harry Potter references, layoffs and startup news galore. Heck, we even have some Reddit news in the mix. It’s a great day for tech fans, employees, and general consumers. Enjoy! , alex
TechCrunch Top 3
- Taking a robotic surveillance company public in 2022: clearly not an easy feat. Nightscope is going public at an interesting time, given the growing general consciousness about privacy. The IPO window has also been tough of late, with some companies delaying their offerings. We have our eye on it, if for no other reason than the fact that robots are inherently cool.
- Firebolt’s valuation rises higher: Announcing a $100 million round at a $1.4 billion valuation is big news for any company. For a startup that shares a name with the Harry Potter broomstick, this is somewhat epic (we tried and failed to joke a golden snitch in the title here). towards us ingrid lunden, Firebolt is “taking on Google’s BigQuery, Snowflake and others” with a cloud data warehouse product that it claims is both less expensive and faster.
- Layoffs at Glossier: Eighty corporate employees are out at Glossier, we learned today. TechCrunch notes that layoffs are worth about a third of the company’s corporate workforce. According to an internal email, it is that the company is going to take advantage of third-party technology to, as we believe, create its own.
Startups/VCs
Today’s startup news is a really neat mix of things, so we’re moving into paragraphs instead of bullet points to help us stretch our legs. to work!
With stock market turmoil and falling valuations for tech companies around the world, three TechCrunchers put their heads together to answer one question: How founders should prepare for declining startup valuations and investor interest. needed? We tend to put three-scene excerpts around singular news events, but this time we had some fun with a trend.
Moving on, news broke today that UBS is buying robo-advisor Wealthfront for $1.4 billion. Those of us paying attention to fintech back in the day will remember when Wealthfront and Betterment fought for new customers and assets, creating new technology to attract capital and users, while crushing each other. also worked for The story is now partially closed, so we took a look at the deal from a revenue, assets under management and customers perspective.
There’s generally good news for European startups — not that they’re suffering, mind — Spain’s startup law is “months away,” we report. The idea here is that Spain wants to attract more tech talent and startups. This makes good sense because tech companies can grow into large firms filled with high-paying jobs, given the space and time to do so. What’s in the law? According to our own Natasha Lomas, the bill includes “key areas such as tax breaks for investors, talent incentives such as stock options, and a new digital nomad visa to attract international technical workers.”
Back on the Continent, TechCrunch wrote today about the supersonic jet startup boom that wants to make fast travel for consumers. Since the Concorde kicked off the bucket, we’ve all been flying at a speed that’s much faster than how our species has managed in the past. And we’ve all been a little like that, OK, I guess. I didn’t think the company was going to survive, but it is, and Boom plans to build its fast jets in North Carolina. Go Tarheel, I guess!
From today oh god just go public file, Reddit is testing a method to allow its users to upload NFTs as their profile pictures. Twitter recently did just that. It’s like uploading a picture as your profile picture, but more complicated. Regardless of what regular people think of the NFT boom, it’s clear that tech-heads are all-in.
Speaking of tech workers, how most companies hire their engineers is a bit backwards. Most developers don’t really spend their time doing single logic tasks on the whiteboard while being watched by recruiters. So why is that how they are investigated? Byteboard’s new method of testing computer engineering talent has just hit $5 million, so that’s probably about to change.
If you live in Europe, you may want to invest in Asian stocks. Or if you live in Latin America, you may want to invest in public companies in the United States. It’s not always as easy as you might think, so West’s work helping people in the larger Americas investing in American companies caught our attention. The Founders Fund is supporting the company’s work.
An interesting part of today’s startup landscape is the world of sales. SalesOps software is no small space, with Gong proving that sales can have serious dollars in its use case. CaptivateIQ is another player in the space, though with a different focus. According to our own Mary Ann Azevedo, CaptivateIQ “developed a no-code SaaS platform to help companies design customized sales commission plans,” raised just $100 million last year and tripled its revenue. Gave.
And from the diversified bucket, the equity team had Bessemer growth-stage investor Marie D’Onofrio to chat on changing valuations, exiting multiples and what’s next for startups. And I made a small argument that more drama in the tech sector would be good for us.
A CISO’s playbook for responding to zero-day exploits
image credit: kalvin (Opens in a new window) / Getty Images
The Log4Shell exploit that gave bad actors the ability to execute malicious code on intruded servers made global headlines and ruined the holidays of many cybersecurity professionals.
Despite a series of high-profile attacks, many companies still lack a response plan, writes Jonathan Trull, SVP of customer solutions, architecture and engineering at Qualys.
Drawing on his experience as a CISO, Trull outlined three steps companies would take to develop the playbook:
- Establish a standard operating procedure
- inventory, inventory, inventory
- Information gathering, sharing and analysis
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Big Tech Inc.
- Apple closes security hole: macOS Monterey 12.2 has updates for iOS 15.3, so if you use those operating systems, it’s time to patch your code. The iOS update alone fixes 10 security bugs.
- Activision Blizzard Won’t Voluntarily Recognize The Union, Of course: Says Nothing We are an employee-focused company more than seeing and saying the collective will of its employees No, Or at least that appears to be what corporations think. Not that you or I had high hopes for a company drowned in your incompetence, but, hey, hope springs and all that.
- Snap upgrades its AR Shopping feature set: According to our own Sarah PerezSocial network Snapchat is “upgrading its AR shopping experience,” which includes changes to “shopping lenses” and analytics for third parties.
- More money for EVs: rita liao Agree with you and me that there are too many electric vehicle companies to track. Thankfully, he’s on rhythm so we can stay informed. This time it’s “Jidu, an electric carmaking company founded by Baidu and its Chinese auto partner Geely,” which just raised $400 million.
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