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What’s a five-letter phrase containing ERUSS? You made the GUESS — USERS, that’s what — and tens of hundreds of thousands of them have joined The New York TIMES after its acquisition of Wordle, in accordance with Amanda‘s REPORT. As LOYAL gamers, we ADORE it. – Christine and Haje
The TechCrunch Prime 3
- Backing Elon: Like sands by means of the hourglass, we’re studying extra on daily basis about who’s stepping as much as put money into Elon Musk’s bid to buy Twitter. A Thursday submitting revealed that almost two dozen buyers have contributed cash, together with Sequoia Capital, Binance, and Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison, who had $1 billion he wasn’t doing something with for the time being.
- CVC may lead to M&A: Over the previous yr, we noticed numerous corporations start their own venture capital arms, and now it seems like all of that enterprise exercise might churn up some M&A exercise. Why? Alex and Anna dig into a few causes, together with lowered public valuations and a inventory market atmosphere that has some firms hitting the pause button on an IPO. They anticipate CVCs to start eyeing early-stage firms for potential offers, maybe beginning with these of their cap desk.
- Shopify signals its next move with Deliverr acquisition: Shopify pulled the set off on an acquisition of Deliverr for $2.1 billion, which has us questioning if this was Shopify attempting to elbow in on Amazon’s Success By Amazon territory, one of many causes some small companies might have chosen the e-commerce firm over different marketplaces. We also looked into whether that was a fair acquisition price.
Startups and VC
Lynda did it back in 2013, Kevin raised $65 million a couple of days in the past, and now it’s Alan’s turn, with a $193 million round for a medical one-stop store. I’m not solely certain what’s occurring on the earth of startup naming, however we’re right here for it. We’re wanting ahead to listening to from Wendy, Talesha and Fred subsequent.
Include me, and also you’ll see, a world of pure appreciation:
Pitch Deck Teardown: Momentum’s $5M seed pitch deck

Picture Credit: TechCrunch
Momentum, a B2B firm that makes gross sales course of automation software program, by chance satisfied an early investor to guide its seed spherical earlier than the founders had even created a pitch deck.
“We confirmed up on a Friday board assembly. On Monday, they had been like, ‘Hey, do you will have 5 minutes? We need to sit down with you,’” mentioned CEO and co-founder Santiago Suarez Ordoñez.
“They actually put a time period sheet on the desk with the precise phrases we needed.”
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Huge Tech Inc.
- Apple, Google and Microsoft, oh my!: These three are coming collectively in help of passwordless logins throughout cellular, desktop and browsers. Sure, there are password managers and different know-how on the market to assist us select “v6Yp8eR43wQ!” as an alternative of “openuporelse1,” however the objective is to make logging into an internet site as simple as unlocking your cellphone. Talking of privateness, as we wait on the destiny of Roe v. Wade, Carly appeared into whether or not it was time to delete that period-tracking app you’ve been utilizing.
- More sanctions for Hikvision: The surveillance digicam firm noticed its shares take a tumble following a report that mentioned the Biden administration would impose additional sanctions on the China-based firm, accusing it of enabling human rights abuses.
- Some shutdowns: YouTube Go is coming to a stop in August, whereas Facebook is shuttering its podcast service on June 3, barely a yr after its launch. Nonetheless, Meta had some higher information for Facebook Reels creators.
- Starlink adds on some more fees: If you happen to like taking your Starlink web in all places you go, it could be much less advantageous now that the corporate has added a $25-a-month charge.