Hello and welcome to the August 30, 2021 edition of Daily Crunch. The startup community is gearing up for Y Combinator Demo Day this week, but the rest of the digital world isn’t slowing down. As a result, we have Apple news, Telegram news, antitrust news, video game news, and so on.
But first, here’s some TechCrunch news: Ryan Reynolds will speak about his startup, Maximum Effort, at Disrupt. That’s a lot of buzz. We’ll be talking about software as well quite a bit. — Alexander
- Youth gaming in China is limited to three hours each week! That’s not a lot! This is huge news for a country like China, which has a sizable gaming sector. However, it’s only one aspect of a bigger regulatory drive in China (which includes things like regulating internet fan culture!) to bring private enterprises closer to the government’s agenda.
- Toast’s initial public offering (IPO) appears to be tasty: Today, TechCrunch took a closer look at Toast’s IPO filing, which was filed in Boston. What are our key takeaways? That the company has grown steadily from its COVID lows and has a solid multipart business plan. The company is a credit to Boston’s thriving startup culture.
- Apple buys classical music, while Spotify acquires Joe Rogan? Apple’s purchase of Primephonic this week fueled the effort to create differentiated music streaming services in an era when music is available everywhere. Apple Music will absorb the smaller company, which is based in Amsterdam.
Are you ready for a smorgasbord of startup news? Good. We have everything you require. But first, Telegram recently passed the 1 billion download threshold, which is a sign of the times. That’s an accomplishment, to be sure, but it also shows that customers may care about privacy after all.
- A personal CRM, at long last, I don’t want to raise your expectations, but creating a personal CRM has long been a unicorn in the startup world. However, Clay, a business that recently received $8 million, has created “a system designed to help you be more mindful with the people in your life,” according to TechCrunch. Please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please I require assistance.
- Alpaca demonstrates that embedded fintech is still a prominent topic: Alpaca has been featured on TechCrunch several times in recent years, both when it raised funds and when we were looking deeper into the realm of API-driven firms. Today, the business announced a $50 million Series B round, as well as a relationship with Plaid and crypto trading capability.
- Eight Sleeps is not haunted by Casper’s unpleasant ghost: Remember when Casper, a D2C mattress startup, went public and failed miserably? Despite this blunder, investors continue to pour money into Eight Sleep, a company that develops smart mattresses. The company just raised $86 million in a Series C round of funding, valuing it at roughly $500 million.
- Prive raises $1.7 million in order to improve e-commerce subscriptions: Two ex-Uber employees are working on a new way to create e-commerce subscriptions that will help both retailers and consumers get better recommendations Win/win.
