TechCrunch+

It would be nice to say that we’ll miss SPACs. But as blank-check companies fade from our view, we have to say we really won’t.

Many companies that went public via a SPAC, or special purpose acquisition company, have seen their valuations implode post-combination. The resulting public-market mess meant that regular investors, not merely the more sophisticated professional investing cohort, took a bath.

Even more, it appears that the best startups out there that may be eventual candidates for a traditional public offering did not pursue the SPAC route while it was open — we can infer this from the ever-rising number of yet-private unicorns — while some less-prepared companies rode the wave straight into a wall. This meant that the average quality of a company going out via a blank check combination was lower than we might have hoped.

The EV SPAC boom? A mess. Fintech SPAC? A mess. So on and so forth.

The Exchange explores startups, markets and money.

Read it every morning on TechCrunch+ or get The Exchange newsletter every Saturday.

This week, we saw the Circle SPAC deal die on the vine (TechCrunch originally somewhat liked the pitch; it appeared that the stablecoin-focused company was actually a good fit for a blank-check combination). The Footprint deal also came apart before it could consummate. Bloomberg noted this week that in addition to the 11 figures of SPAC deals falling to pieces yesterday, there have been nearly five dozen SPAC deals killed this year. (Surf Air called off its deal a few weeks ago, and the list goes on.)

Circle and Footprint’s aborted debuts are the final nail in the SPAC coffin by Anna Heim originally published on TechCrunch

Google announced today that it’s making it easier for users to drill down on a search and explore related topics. Search currently has a few filters to help you refine and separate your search results between videos, news, images or shopping results. Now, the search giant is going to start showing users a scrollable list of related topics alongside its current filters at the top of the search results page.

For example, if you’re searching for dinner ideas, you might see filter topics like “healthy” or “easy” pop up in the new scrollable list. If you tap on one of the filters, it will add it to your search query. You can add or remove topics, which are designated by a + symbol, to quickly zoom in or backtrack on a search.

Topics are dynamic and will change as you tap in order to give you more options and help you explore new areas, Google says. For instance, if you tapped on a “healthy” filter, you may see “vegetarian” or “quick” appear next. Google says the new change will roll out for English users in the U.S. on iOS, Android and the web in the coming days.

“When you conduct a search, our systems automatically display relevant topics for you based on what we understand about how people search and from analyzing content across the web,” Google said in a blog post. “Both topics and filters are shown in the order that our systems automatically determine is most helpful for your specific query. If you don’t see a particular filter you want, you can find more using the “All filters” option, which is available at the end of the row.”

Today’s announcement comes a day after Google introduced a “Continuous Scrolling” experience on desktop so users don’t have to navigate across pages to find relevant search results, expanding a feature the company has offered on mobile for some time.

Google Search’s new topic filters make it easier to refine results or expand searches by Aisha Malik originally published on TechCrunch

If you ask three different people whether we’re in a recession, you could easily get three different answers.

As often as the ‘R’ word is bandied about in tech, a survey of 450 early-stage founders found that only 12% plan to hire fewer workers and 6% have laid people off.

“The data is proving that early-stage founders are seeing a more gradual approach to the downturn,” said January Ventures founding partner Jen Neundorfer.

Full TechCrunch+ articles are only available to members
Use discount code TCPLUSROUNDUP to save 20% off a one- or two-year subscription

“It’s in contrast to some of the memos you see from the Sequoias of the world that say, ‘cut immediately and cut deep.’”

Eighty percent of the seed-stage and pre-seed founders who responded to January’s survey have less than a year of runway left. Only half of the respondents said they planned to cut costs, “compared to 2020, when 81% of companies reported doing so,” writes Rebecca Szkutak.

Thanks very much for reading,

Walter Thompson
Editorial Manager, TechCrunch+
@yourprotagonist

December 8 Twitter Space: Immigration law for startups

On Thursday, December 8 at 9 a.m. PT/noon ET, I’m hosting a Twitter Space with Sophie Alcorn, an immigration attorney based in Silicon Valley and the author of Dear Sophie, a column that appears on TechCrunch+ each Wednesday.

If you’re a visa worker who’s been laid off, or if you just have questions about working and living legally inside the United States, please join the conversation.

This Space is open to everyone: click through to set a reminder and submit your immigration-related questions so we can raise them during the Q&A.

Use customer health data to grow and forecast future NRR

When investors are more interested in organic growth than in writing follow-on checks, desperate founders may launch a quest for One Metric to Rule Them All, like one of the rings of power in Middle Earth.

Net revenue retention is a powerful yardstick for startups seeking to reduce churn rates, which is why Kellie Capote, chief customer officer at Gainsight, recommends using the DEAR framework:

Deployment
Engagement
Adoption
ROI

“The DEAR customer outcomes score enables you to connect workflows to leading indicators and lagging outcomes,” writes Capote.

“If you’re looking for a data-driven way to build confidence in your modeling with your executive team and board, this is it.”

Which way is up? The end of free money and the importance of keeping cash on hand

In simpler times, founders could often satisfy investors just by showing how quickly their company was meeting growth expectations.

“Well, investors today care about the less-distant future,” according to Max Schireson, an operating partner at Battery Ventures.

“They care about how much money they need to put into your company to get to that future and when it will arrive.”

In a guest post for TC+, he shares frank advice and multiple scenarios that can help founders meet investor exceptions during tough times.

“They say time is the one thing you can’t buy, but in fact, time is the easiest thing to buy at a startup.”

If you’re a bootstrapped startup, turn to user-centered design to thrive during adversity

I began paying more attention to a CEO who’s using surveys to ask platform users about which features are most important to them.

So far, it’s not going very well.

With true user-centered design, product managers gather as much information as they can to make sure they’re building for an audience — not themselves.

“Now that investors are more demanding and writing smaller checks, UCD can be the difference between your business launching or never making it off the drawing board,” says Adam Sandman, founder and CEO of Inflectra.

How companies can slash ballooning SaaS costs

A study conducted by purchasing management platform Vertice found that one of every eight dollars spent by enterprises go to SaaS products.

“It’s not surprising when you consider the average organization now uses around 110 SaaS solutions,” reports Kyle Wiggers. As a result, customers are spending 53% more on software licensing today than in 2017.

“Most organizations have grown their portfolio of software vendors dramatically over the past 10 years,” said Stephen White, senior director-analyst, Gartner. “It’s not uncommon to have more than doubled that vendor portfolio.”

TechCrunch+ roundup: The end of free money, how to forecast NRR, slashing SaaS spending by Walter Thompson originally published on TechCrunch

Welcome back to Found, where we get the stories behind the startups.

This week the show kicks off a new season and welcomes a new co-host. In this episode, Darrell is joined by Becca Szkutak to chat with Valentina Milanova, the founder of Daye, a gynecological health company creating CBD infused tampons. Valentina talks about why she decided to take on tampon behemoths like Tampax, the horrors she found when researching the industry and what it was like to pitch her startup to male investors. She also talked about how she’s approached mental health and avoiding burnout for Daye employees.

Subscribe to Found to hear more stories from founders each week.

Connect with us:

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Via email: found@techcrunch.com

Starting the tampon revolution with Valentina Milanova by Rebecca Szkutak originally published on TechCrunch

Lagos-headquartered venture capital firm Future Africa is teaming up with TLG Capital, a London-based open-ended credit fund, to launch a $25 million venture debt fund earmarked for portfolio companies.

The fund created from TLG’s existing funds will help Future Africa’s portfolio companies preserve their runway in an increasingly tight fundraising environment. Last year, African startups raised over $5 billion and one common theme from two mega-rounds that were announced was some dependency on debt funding: B2B e-commerce platform TradeDepot and fintech MFS Africa.

The event signaled that startups need debt irrespective of their business type. Over the last two years, we’ve seen startups such as mobility fintech Moove and B2B food supply chain platform Twiga – most recently through the yet-to-be-launched Hustler Fund in partnership with the Kenyan government – raise several million in debt to run operations.

Debt funding activity may have slowed down this year, but Future Africa founder and general partner Iyinoluwa Aboyeji told TechCrunch that the cost and risk appetite of equity capital coupled with rising interest rates will push founders toward embracing debt to run startup operations. He argued further that even when founders manage to raise equity it may come with terms that could heavily dilute their ownership of the business.

“Many founders want to keep growing through the downturn,” said the founder-cum-investor. “Debt is the best option provided that your unit economics are well defined and you have built the appropriate financial discipline which even equity investors are asking to see now.

Since its launch in 2016, Future Africa has invested in over 90 companies such as Flutterwave, Andela, Stears, and 54gene, worth over $6 billion, according to the firm. On the other hand, TLG Capital – with its strong debt structuring expertise spanning more than a decade – has invested in over 30 deals to date such as FairMoney and Branch, exiting over 20, it said in the shared statement. Future Africa intends to leverage the credit fund’s debt experience to build out this venture debt program. According to Aboyeji, the program seeks to help and reward founders who do a good job of building the right financial discipline as well as encourage founders to build good businesses rather than chase valuations.

“We have seen access to liquidity become increasingly challenging for founders, and are pleased to reiterate TLG Capital’s commitment to Africa’s early-stage entrepreneurs with Future Africa. Having already engaged with 13 of Future Africa’s founders we see common challenges: businesses contend with large currency devaluations in home markets while raising US Dollar equity, for instance,” said Aum Thacker, an investor at TLG Capital. “We are developing a suite of best-in-class products so founders can focus on operating and innovating – while TLG as a structuring partner helps ensure their businesses are best placed in response to macroeconomic headwinds.”

As Thacker’s quote reads, the structuring support from TLG has been offered to 13 of Future Africa’s portfolio companies so far (though the checks are yet to be written to these startups). They meet certain criteria, Aboyeji said, one of which is that selected startups must generate between $1-10 million in annual revenue.

TLG Capital intends to structure the debt in such a way that they are asset-backed and based on “proper fundamentals.” The firm will also work closely with the CFOs of Future Africa’s portfolio to prepare them to: maintain proper records and financial discipline, achieve proper unit economics and receive and manage leverage on their books. Thacker, who leads TLG Capital’s focus on originating and executing transactions within the growth equity space, will carry out the selection as both parties plan to expand this funnel in the coming months.

Future Africa teams up with TLG Capital to set up $25M venture debt fund for portfolio companies by Tage Kene-Okafor originally published on TechCrunch

Today, Warner Bros. Discovery and Amazon announced that HBO Max is back on Prime Video Channels in the United States after it leftas an Amazon offering in 2021.

Prime subscribers can sign up for HBO Max for $14.99 per month via the Prime Video app or at amazon.com/channels/hbomax. The channel can be canceled at any time.

The companies also noted in an announcement that customers would have access to the upcoming “enhanced” streaming service when it launches in 2023, which will combine HBO Max and Discovery+ content.

“Now, with the addition of HBO Max again, customers can easily add this subscription and enjoy even more award-winning and fan-favorite entertainment on Prime Video,” said Cem Sibay, vice president of Prime Video, in a statement.

“Warner Bros. Discovery is committed to making HBO Max available to as broad an audience as possible while also advancing our data-driven approach to understanding our customers and best serving their viewing interests. Today, we are thrilled to take an important step forward by announcing that HBO Max is returning to Prime Video Channels,” added Bruce Campbell, chief revenue and strategy officer, Warner Bros. Discovery.

HBO Max launched in May 2020 without support for Amazon devices because former WarnerMedia CEO Jason Kilar wanted the streaming service to be available as a dedicated app on Fire TV devices rather than available through Prime Video Channels. A dedicated app gives Warner access to all customer data and subscription revenue as opposed to sharing it with Amazon. Despite this, however, HBO Max became available as a Prime Video Channel months later, likely so more consumers would subscribe to the service.

The streaming service then left Prime Video in 2021 due to the former parent company, AT&T, failing to reach an agreement to extend distribution. WarnerMedia lost 1.8 million subscribers that quarter due to no longer being available on Prime.

Aside from WBD CEO David Zaslav’s questionable content strategy, HBO Max’s return to Prime Video Channels is a smart move for the company. WBD fell short last quarter, missing Wall Street expectations after many titles disappeared from HBO Max.

While the reasoning behind the latest deal wasn’t disclosed, we guess that Zaslav wanted to strike a new deal with Amazon in order to gain new subscribers for the upcoming combined streaming service, which is rumored to be called “Max.”

HBO Max comes back to Prime Video Channels by Lauren Forristal originally published on TechCrunch

Major privacy complaints targeting the legality of Meta’s core advertising business model in Europe have finally been settled via a dispute resolution mechanism baked into the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).

The complaints, which date back to May 2018, take aim at the tech giant’s so-called “forced consent” to continue tracking and targeting users by processing their personal data to build profiles for behavioral advertising so the outcome could have major ramifications for how Meta operates if regulators order the company to amend its practices.

The GDPR also allows for large fines for major violations — of up to 4% of global annual turnover.

The European Data Protection Board (EDPB), a steering body for the GDPR, confirmed today it has stepped in to three binding decisions in the three complaints against Meta platforms Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp.

The trio of complaints were filed by European privacy campaign group, noyb, as soon as the GDPR entered into application across the EU. So it’s taken some 4.5 years just to get to this point.

The EU’s flagship data protection regulation has been much criticised for the slow pace of enforcement on major cross-border complaints against tech giants and this clutch of strategic complaints is one of a handful of poster children for those gripes. But while decisions are now finally in sight the wrangling could still continue — since Meta may appeal against any enforcement, both in Irish courts and in front of EU judiciary (in the case of the EDPB’s binding decisions), potentially putting any corrective orders on hold pending the outcome of its appeals.

What exactly has been decided? The EDPB is not disclosing that yet. The protocol it’s following means it passes its binding decisions back to the Irish Data Protection Commission (DPC), Meta’s lead privacy regulator in the EU, which must then apply them in the final decisions it will issue.

The DPC now has one month to issue final decisions and confirm any financial penalties. So we should get the full gory details by early next year.

The Wall Street Journal may offer a glimpse of what’s to come: It’s reporting that Meta’s ad model will face restrictions in the EU — citing “people familiar with the situation”.

It also reports the company will face “significant” fines for breaching the GDPR.

“The board’s rulings Monday, which haven’t yet been disclosed publicly, don’t directly order Meta to change practices but rather call for Ireland’s Data Protection Commission to issue public orders that reflect its decisions, along with significant fines,” the WSJ wrote, citing (unnamed) sources.

Covering the WSJ’s report, Reuters noted that shares in Meta fell 5.3% in morning trading following the development.

A spokeswoman for the EDPB confirmed it cannot comment on the substance of the binding decisions it’s taken.

“In line with Art. 65 (5) GDPR, we cannot comment on the content of the decisions until after the Irish DPC has notified the controller of its final decisions,” she told TechCrunch. “As indicated in our press release, the EDPB looked into whether or not the processing of personal data for the performance of a contract is a suitable legal basis for behavioural advertising, but at this point in time we cannot confirm what the EDPB’s decision in this matter was.”

The DPC also declined comment on the newspaper’s report — but deputy commissioner Graham Doyle confirmed to us that it will announce binding decisions on these complaints in early January.

We’ve also reached out to Meta for a response to the development.

The company was recently spotted in a filing setting aside €3BN for data protection fines in 2022 and 2023 — a large chunk of which has yet to land.

GDPR fines for Meta so far this year include a €265M penalty for a Facebook data-scraping breach last month; €405M for an Instagram violation of children’s privacy back in September; and €17M for several 2018 Facebook data breaches issued in March — plus France’s data protection watchdog hit Meta with a €60M penalty in January over Facebook cookie consent violations of the EU’s ePrivacy Directive — for a total of €747M in publicly disclosed EU data protection and privacy fines… so, per its filing, the tech giant appears to be expecting 2023 to be considerably more expensive for its European business.

One thing is clear: A lot is at stake for the company.

As the EDPB’s press release confirms, its decisions “settle[s], among others, the question of whether or not the processing of personal data for the performance of a contract is a suitable legal basis for behavioural advertising, in the cases of Facebook and Instagram, and for service improvement, in the case of WhatsApp”.

So, depending on what’s been decided, Meta could finally be forced to ask users if they want to be tracked — a choice the adtech giant currently denies. On Facebook and Instagram it’s either agree to be profiled and targeted — or no service for you.

If Meta is forced to ask users if they want “personalized” ads (its favored euphemism for surveillance ads) that is definitely big news — given rates of denials when web users are actually given a choice over targeted ads are typically very high. (See for e.g. Apple’s App Tracking Transparency ‘request to track’ feature for third party iOS apps — where denials were running at circa 75%, per Adjust data released earlier this year and covered by MediaPost.)

The crux of noyb’s original complaints against Meta services was that users were not offered a choice to deny its processing for advertising — despite the GDPR stipulating that if consent is the legal basis being claimed for processing personal data it must be specific, informed and freely given. (Not, er, bundled, manipulated and forced!)

However — plot twist! — it later emerged that as the GDPR came into application Meta had quietly switched from claiming consent as its legal basis for this behavioral advertising processing to saying it is necessary for the performance of a contract — and claiming users of Facebook and Instagram are in a contract with Meta to receive targeting ads.

This argument implies that Meta’s core service is not social networking; it’s behavioural advertising. noyb’s honorary chairman and long-time privacy law thorn in Facebook’s side, Max Schrems, has called this an exceptionally shameless attempt to bypass the GDPR.

A draft decision by Ireland’s DPC on the complaints which was published by noyb last year (much to the DPC’s chagrin) revealed the Irish regulator had not been minded to object to Meta’s consent bypass. However other EU DPAs — which are able to lodge objections to a lead supervisor’s draft decision under the GDPR’s one-stop-shop mechanism for dealing with cross border complaints — did object and months of regulatory wrangling followed as different EU regulators slugged it out to see if they could agree.

Evidently, in this case, the DPAs could not find consensus between themselves — hence the EDPB stepping in with binding decisions now. And the Board’s decision is final.

Responding to this development — and citing the WSJ’s reporting — noyb writes in a press release that the EDPB has overturned the DPC’s much derided draft decision (which had also only proposed a paltry fine of $36M), saying the decision “requires that Meta may not use personal data for ads based on an alleged ‘contract’”.

“Users will therefore need to have a yes/no consent option,” it said — dubbing the outcome a “win” (even without knowing the exact size of the “substantial” fine it says was requested by the EDPB).

Other forms of advertising by Meta — like contextual ads where targeting is based on the content of the page being viewed — are not prohibited under the EDPB’s decision, per noyb, which predicts the decision will nonetheless “dramatically” limit Meta’s profits in the EU.

In a statement, Schrems said: “Instead of having a yes/no option for personalized ads, [Meta] just moved the consent clause in the terms and conditions. This is not just unfair but clearly illegal. We are not aware of any other company that has tried to ignore the GDPR in such an arrogant way.”

“This is a huge blow to Meta’s profits in the EU,” he added. “People now need to be asked if they want their data to be used for ads or not. They must have a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ answer and can change their mind at any time. The decision ensures a level playing field with other advertisers that also need to get opt-in consent.”

noyb’s take on the development also pours cold water on the prospect of any Meta appeal against this GDPR smackdown to its core business model — calling the chances of the company winning such an appeal “minimal” since the final decisions have been handed down by the EDPB, an expert body that’s responsible for ensuring harmonized application of the GDPR across the bloc (by, for example, providing guidance on how the rules should be applied in practice).

It also points to two similar cases already before the Court of Justice of the EU (CJEU) on Meta’s consent bypass — suggesting those “may settle the issue and all appeals for good”.

noyb further suggests Meta could face legal action from users — “over the illegal use of their data for the past 4.5 years”.

Meta is already facing a number of class action privacy-citing suits in Europe. Further GDPR enforcement will only dial up more momentum for damages claims as litigation funders scent victory.

Meta’s behavioral ads will finally face GDPR privacy reckoning in January by Natasha Lomas originally published on TechCrunch

Everyone who has email knows what a canned marketing email sounds like (and has probably deleted tons of them). For sales development representatives, automated emails are necessary to create the volume of outbound inquiries they need to get a decent number of leads. But badly written emails result in few replies and also make companies look bad. SellScale wants to do away with standard “spray and pray” campaigns with a platform that uses generative AI, including GPT-3, to craft more natural sounding, personalized emails at scale.

SellScale announced today it has raised $3 million in funding led by Pear.VC’s Pejman Nozad, with participation from Ovo Fund’s Eric Chen and Browder Capital’s Joshua Browder. The startup claims its revenue has doubled month-over-month for the last three months.

Founders Ishan Sharma and Aakash Adesara met in high school and were roommates at U.C. Berkeley. After graduating, each of them had jobs where they worked closely with sales and growth teams. Aakash was in growth engineering at Nextdoor, while Ishan held a position in McKinsey’s Growth, Marketing and Sales Service lines. The two reunited at healthcare startup Athelas, where Sharma was in charge of marketing and Adesara led growth engineering.

As a side hustle, the two started DailyDropout.FYI, a weekly newsletter that focuses on one startup a week and has 80,000 readers. They sent cold emails to founders, researching their backgrounds and products to say why they wanted to feature them. The process was time-consuming, so Adesara decided to train OpenAI’s language model GPT-3 on 100 emails Sharma had written.

Those emails were able to get 35% conversion rates, so they also started using language models to reach potential advertisers. As a result, the two say they were able to grow DailyDropout.FYI to six figures annually.

SellScale was founded after the two decided to bring the tools they had created for their newsletter to larger teams. To use SellScale, sales development representatives first pull the best outbound emails written by their teams to train GPT-3 and the other language models used by the platform. Then SellScale personalizes those emails by pulling data from clients’ CRMs and publicly available information from more than 40 data sources, including social media platforms, RSS feeds and articles. As more emails are sent through SellScale, its AI continues to use successful ones to refine its models.

To help cutdown on a growth team’s workflow, SellScale integrates with tools like Gmail, Outreach.io, Apollo, LinkedIn and Zapier.

Sharma said SellScale takes small details seriously. For example, if a client in healthcare is sending emails to licensed doctors, it automatically adjusts its model to write “Dr. [last name]” instead of their first name.

SellScale also works closely with sales team to help them hit quarterly revenue targets. Sharma said many have seen up to 70% more qualified conversions after they started using SellScale.

Startups that use GPT-3 to help marketing customers have pulled a lot of investor interest lately. Some that TechCrunch have covered include Regie, ScaleNut and Copy.ai.

Sharma said SellScale differentiates from other writing platforms that use large language models with its workflow automation tools that automatically generate, send and fine-tine emails with minimal coaching. After their experience with growth teams at Athelas and Nextdoor, Sharma and Adesara wanted SellScale to require as little involvement as possible from sales development representatives.”

“We don’t want to be another tool to their dozens,” he said. “Many competitors measure the value of their product on how much time salespeople spend inside their product. We measure value with how much sales people don’t have to use SellScale or prospecting tools to write outbound.”

Sellscale uses generative AI to create better marketing emails by Catherine Shu originally published on TechCrunch

At its annual Lens Fest event, Snap announced that it’s experimenting with a small group of AR creators and developers to build Lenses with digital goods that can be purchased with Snap Tokens. As part of this experiment, users will be able to unlock power-ups, AR items and extra tools within select Lenses.

Snap Tokens, which were first introduced in 2020, can be purchased within the Snapchat app by clicking on your profile icon and scrolling down to “My Snap Tokens.” You can purchase 80 Tokens for $0.99, 250 Tokens for $2.99, 500 Tokens for $4.99 or 1,100 Tokens for $9.99. Tokens can currently be redeemed for Gifts to send to creators or for exclusive Bitmoji merchandise. With this new experiment, users will be able to use their Tokens to unlock digital goods within a Lens.

Sophia Dominguez, the head of Snap’s global AR community efforts, told TechCrunch in an interview that the company hand-selected 10 AR creators and developers for this pilot. For this initial roll out, Snap focused on three use cases for AR: self expression, fashion and play. The company looked for three to five developers for each category and then whittled it down to a select few.

One of the creators that Snap worked with for this pilot is Phillip Walton, the creator of the famous Potato Lens. Dominguez says Walton had noted that users had asked for ways to enhance or upgrade the potato Lens, which the experiment now makes possible, as users can start using Tokens to upgrade the Lens. You can redeem Tokens to turn the potato into a police officer, magician, cat and more.

Another popular Lens that is part of the pilot is the multiplayer Table Trenches Lens by DB Creations. As part of the new experiment, users will be able to redeem Tokens to get new skins, access new levels and other opportunities within the Lens.

“With digital goods, users are able to upgrade Lenses and add all sorts of different capabilities to it,” Dominguez told TechCrunch. “We’re exploring these digital goods as new ways for creators and developers to build businesses beyond creating Lenses for brands and clients. This is the very beginning and we’re excited to see how Snapchatters engage with it.”

Dominguez says Snap launched this new experiment in response to feedback from its community of AR creators and developers who want additional ways to monetize. Snap didn’t share the specifics about the monetization behind this experiment, but noted that creators received payment for the production of their upgraded Lenses and will continue to receive payments.

These new Lenses will roll out in Australia and New Zealand over the coming weeks and will appear in the Lens Carousel and Lens Explorer. The company plans to expand the experiment to more countries in the future.

The experiment represents a new way for Snapchat to generate revenue via Tokens, which is something that it seems to be focusing more on lately. This morning, Snapchat said it’s partnering with Adidas to launch a new exclusive Bitmoji Fashion Drop that can be claimed via Tokens. Snap’s announcements from today indicate that the company is looking to implement Tokens into more parts of its app as a way to generate additional revenue.

Today’s news comes as Snap’s AR community is continuing to grow. The company announced today that there are more than 300,000 AR creators and developers on its platform, which is an increase from the 250,000 figure that Snap shared at its previous Lens Fest event. Snap says these AR creators and developers have built more than three million Lenses. Dominguez says 80% of these AR creators are based outside of the United States. Of the 300,000 AR creators, 300 of them have garnered more than one billion views on their Lenses. In total, Lenses have been viewed more than five trillion times.

In order to continue investing in AR, Snap announced today that it’s launching a new Lensathon with a $200,000 prize pool to challenge creators to push what’s possible in AR. Creators have until January 31st to compete for a part of the prize.

Snapchat is testing Lenses with power-ups and upgrades that you can buy by Aisha Malik originally published on TechCrunch

An old maxim among courtroom litigators states that you should only ask a question of a witness when you already know how they will answer. Otherwise, you might be in for an unpleasant surprise. For this reason, effective prosecutors and defense attorneys engage in various pre-trial activities, including “witness prep,” to help them take control of the narrative.

As many SaaS companies look to increase Net Revenue Retention (NRR) to compensate for weak or declining sales, they may want to adopt and adapt this maxim to say: “Before we ask existing customers to renew or expand their subscriptions, we will pursue customer success (CS) strategies and activities (“customer prep”) that help us avoid unpleasant surprises and increase the number of successful outcomes.”

Now comes the tricky part. What kinds of customer health data should you collect and analyze to help you avoid unpleasant surprises? And which strategies and activities should your sales and post-sales teams pursue in response to this data?

A DEAR solution

Historically, many CS leaders have relied on anecdotal evidence and presumed “best practices” in the hope of boosting NRR. Even when this approach seemed to work, customer success managers (CSMs) often lacked the empirical evidence to firmly connect the success with their team’s good work.

To overcome such strategic “squishiness,” we spearheaded the development of a more scientific, data-driven customer health scoring and retention modeling methodology. Known as DEAR (Deployment, Engagement, Adoption, ROI), this framework aims to help CS teams deliver exceptional customer experiences and drive existing customers to their desired outcomes. In addition to a customer experience score, DEAR also provides a customer outcomes score, an objective indicator of whether the customer is seeing value and ROI on their investment.

Below is a breakdown of DEAR’s four components.

Note that in order to efficiently leverage this information, you’ll need the right technology (ideally, customer management software) and behavioral data (ideally, telemetry about how your customers are using the product).

Deployment

Is the customer activated? Are they set up to effectively use what they bought? Poor Deployment is often a strong indicator of the risk of partial churn or downsell.

Use customer health data to grow and forecast NRR by Ram Iyer originally published on TechCrunch