TechCrunch+

Indian fintech Money View said on Monday it has raised $75 million in a new funding round, its second this year, despite the market slump as it looks to scale its core credit business and build more products in the South Asian market.

Apis Partners led Money View’s Series E funding round, valuing the Bengaluru-headquartered startup at $900 million, up from $615 million in a $75 million Series D funding round in March. The startup said in a statement that the round hasn’t closed and it expects to raise more capital.

TechCrunch reported in October that Money View was engaging with investors to raise up to $150 million at a valuation of $1 billion. The startup said today that existing backers Tiger Global, Winter Capital and Evolence also participated in the funding.

The eight-year-old startup offers personalized credit products and financial management solutions to customers who otherwise don’t have a credit score and so can’t avail credit from banks and other financial institutions. India’s credit bureau data book is thin, making most individuals in the South Asian market unworthy of credit. Fintechs use modern-age underwriting systems to lend to customers and a maze of regulatory arbitrage — increasingly getting closed — to operate.

Money View is currently disbursing about $1.2 billion in loans, at an annualized-basis, and managing over $800 million, it said. The startup, which says it has been profitable for the past two years, clocked a revenue of $30.6 million and a profit of $2.14 million in the financial year that ended in March, according to regulatory disclosure.

“Our performance and growth over the past two years has allowed us to drive our mission of true financial inclusion in India with great success,” said Puneet Agarwal, founder and chief executive of Money View, in a statement. “We are thrilled to have Apis Partners join us in our journey and with their support, we look forward to becoming India’s leading online credit platform with innovative and holistic financial solutions.”

Money View plans to deploy the fresh funds to grow its credit business, broaden its product portfolio with services such as digital bank accounts, insurance, wealth management and hire more talent, it said.

Its new funding comes at a time when the dealflow activity has slowed down dramatically in the South Asian market as investors grow cautious of writing new checks and evaluate their underwriting models after valuations of publicly listed firms take a tumble.

“Money View has achieved great success already, with their credit products democratising the access for millions of customers in India, and we are truly excited to partner with the company at this stage of its journey,” said Matteo Stefanel, Co-founder and Managing Partner at Apis Partners, in a statement.

Indian fintech Money View valued at $900 million in new funding by Manish Singh originally published on TechCrunch

The year is coming to an end, and with it, I continue an annual tradition of writing a x words about x piece. This year, that means trying to cram the year 2022 into 2,022 words. As you might imagine, that’s a lot. I usually write 5,000-6,000 words and then have to ruthlessly edit it down to try to hit my word cap. Part of the challenge, though, is to re-live all the highs and lows of the year without getting overwhelmed. The trick is to keep your fingers moving no matter what. And recently, I found an app for that, which I’d love to share with y’all. ’tis the season, after all.

As a writer, you’ll often find yourself reaching for the save button. It is your lifeline, after all. A short power cut or a computer snafu is all it takes to make all of your hard work crumble to nothingness, after all. But what if there was no save button? What if there was no staring out of the window for inspiration, no pauses to think of a witty turn of phrase, and no way to stop for a break? What if this was like the movie Speed 2, except instead of a boat, you’re on a bus? What if, when you slow down, it explodes? Well. Welcome to the world of extreme writing.

That’s the premise for the Most Dangerous Writing App. If you stop writing for more than a couple of seconds, you’ll see your writing fade out of existence. And, if you’re particularly slow about it, that’s the end. Your words disappear into the digital ether, never to be seen again. Don’t pick up your phone. Don’t react to a notification. If the FedEX guy finally turned up with that parcel you’ve been waiting for well TOUGH, there’s no way to slow down for even a moment.

Encouraging you to stay focused and actually a great tool to find and stay in your flow state, the Most Dangerous Writing App is an awesome idea. Being forced to put a few words down every second means that the fear of the empty page melts away, and having to continue writing helps keep you on your toes.

In many ways, the app reminds me of National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo), where you need to bang out a 50,000-word novel. Or something. I can’t remember. Usually, I’d Google it to make sure I got the right word count, but I can’t stop because if I open a new tab I will lose what I’ve written so far in this article. Argh! But okay, the point is that it’ll both help you start writing and actually force you to finish a piece as well. Because, well, if you don’t finish it, you lose it. And I don’t want that. Nobody wants that.

It’s not exactly a very advanced app, but it is a surprising and fun way to force yourself to start writing and to keep writing. It made me think about how I write very differently. Incidentally, it proves that I am, in fact, able to write for five minutes straight as well, which is a pretty beautiful gift to be able to give to myself.

I am also sure that the TechCrunch editors will be delighted at me writing for five minutes straight before hitting publish, pausing for just long enough to add some links and a featured image, but without letting an editor fix my typos. Sorry, Henry.

Don’t stop writing, or your words will vanish off the page by Haje Jan Kamps originally published on TechCrunch

This year in tech, too much happened and very little of it made sense. It was like we were being controlled by a random number generator that would dictate the whims of the tech industry, leading to multiple “biggest news stories of the year” happening over the course of a month, all completely disconnected from one another.

I can’t stop thinking about a very good tweet I saw last month, which encapsulated the absurdity of the year — it was something along the lines of, “Meta laid off 11,000 people and it’s only the third biggest tech story of the week.” Normally, a social media giant laying off 13% of its workforce would easily be the week’s top story, but this was the moment when FTX went bankrupt and everyone was impersonating corporations on Twitter because somehow Elon Musk didn’t think through how things would go horribly wrong if anyone could buy a blue check. Oh, good times.

When I say it feels like we’re living in a simulation, what I mean is that sometimes, I hear about the latest tech news and feel like someone threw some words in a hat, picked a few, and tried to connect the dots. Of course, that’s not what’s really happening. But in January, would you have believed me if I told you that Twitter owner Elon Musk polled users to decide that he would unban Donald Trump?

These absurd events in tech have consequences. Crypto collapses like FTX’s bankruptcy and the UST scandal have harmed actual people who invested significant sums of money into something that they believed to be a good investment. It’s funny to think about how you’d react ten years ago if someone told you that Meta (oh yeah, that’s what Facebook is called now) is losing billions of dollars every quarter to build virtual reality technology that no one seems to want. But those management decisions are not a joke for the employees who lost their jobs because of those choices.

Where does this leave us? We’re in a moment in tech history where nothing is too absurd to be possible. That’s both inspiring and horrifying. It’s possible for a team of Amazon fulfillment center workers in Staten Island to win a union election, successfully advocating for themselves in the face of tremendous adversity. It’s also possible for Elon Musk to buy Twitter for $44 billion.

AI technology like Stable Diffusion and ChatGPT encapsulate this fragile balance between innovation and horror. You can make beautiful artworks in seconds, and you can also endanger the livelihoods of working artists. You can ask an AI chatbot to teach you about history, but there’s no way to know if its response is factually accurate (unless you do further research, in which case, you could’ve just done your own research to begin with).

But perhaps part of the reason why AI generators have garnered such mainstream appeal is that they almost feel natural to us. This year’s tech news feels so bizarre that they might as well have been generated by ChatGPT.

Or maybe reality is actually stranger than anything an AI could come up with. I asked ChatGPT to write some headlines about tech news for me, and it came up with these snoozers (in addition to some factually inaccurate headlines, which I omitted for the sake of journalism):

“Apple’s iOS 15 update brings major improvements to iPhones and iPads”
“Amazon’s new line of autonomous delivery robots causes controversy”
“Intel announces new line of processors with advanced security features”

Pretty boring! Here are some actual real things that happened in tech this year:

Tony the Tiger made his debut as a VTuber.
Someone claimed to be a laid off Twitter employee named Rahul Ligma, and a herd of reporters did not get the joke, inadvertently meaning that I had to explain the “ligma” joke on like four different tech podcasts.
Three people got arrested for operating a Club Penguin clone.
One of the Department of Justice’s main suspects in a $3.6 billion crypto money laundering scheme is an entrepreneur-slash-rapper named Razzlekhan.
The new Pokémon game has a line of dialogue with the word “cheugy.”
Donald Trump dropped an NFT collection.
A bad Twitter feature update impacted the stock of a pharmaceutical company.
Elon Musk’s greatest rival is a University of Central Florida sophomore.
FTC chair Lina Khan said that Taylor Swift did more to educate Gen Z about antitrust law than she ever could.
Meta is selling a $1,499 VR headset to be used for remote work.
The UK Treasury made a Discord account to share public announcements but was immediately spammed with people using emoji reactions to make dirty jokes (and speaking of the UK, there have been three different Prime Ministers since September.)

These are strange times. If the rules are made up and the points don’t matter, let’s at least hope that if the absurdity continues into 2023, the tech news is more amusing than harmful. I want more Chris Pratt voicing live action Mario, and fewer tech CEOs being sentenced for fraud. Is that too much to ask?

This year in tech felt like a simulation by Amanda Silberling originally published on TechCrunch

If you’re a parent with young children, then you’ll probably hear this a lot on Christmas Eve: “Where’s Santa right now?” With tracking tools like the NORAD Santa Tracker and Google’s Santa Tracker, everyone can know when Father Christmas will arrive.

Here’s how to follow Santa’s journey this Christmas Eve.

Track Santa Claus with NORAD

NORAD (North American Aerospace Defence Command) had the first-ever Santa tracker in 1955. While it used to be just a boring animation of Santa’s sleigh and reindeer flying across a map, NORAD has added tons of features in recent years, such as fun mini-games, videos, stories and Christmas music.

Rather than a 2D model, the NORAD Santa tracker has a 3D visual depiction of Santa’s journey as the platform was built on Cesium’s open-source 3D mapping library. It also uses Bing Maps satellite imagery, making the globe look more “realistic.”

Along with the tracker tool, users can also see a “Santa Cam,” which has videos of Santa making his way around the world to deliver presents to every kid on the nice list.

NORAD’s website has Santa’s North Pole Village, which includes a holiday countdown, arcade-style games, kid-friendly music, an online library and various videos that can be watched on NORAD’s official YouTube channel.

NORAD Santa tracker is available on noradsanta.org, or you can download the official NORAD Tracks Santa app onApple’s App Store or theGoogle Play Store. The website is available in English, Chinese, French, Spanish, Japanese, German, Italian and Portuguese.

You can also track Santa through NORAD Tracker’s social media accounts, such as Facebook,Twitter andInstagram.

For a more personable experience, call 1-877-HI-NORAD (1-877-446-6732), and you’ll speak with a volunteer from the organization’s call center who’ll update you on Santa’s location.

Plus, through a partnership with Amazon, NORAD lets Amazon Alexa users track Santa. Users can open the Amazon Alexa app and go to “Skills & Games,” then search for “NORAD Tracks Santa” skill. Once enabled, you can ask: “Alexa, where’s Santa?” You can also say, “Alexa, call Santa,” and the jolly man will hop on the phone with you and your kids. There’s an option to leave a voicemail message for him as well.

Track Santa Claus with Google

Google’s Santa Tracker launched in 2004 and simulates the tracking of Santa. The website features a live map of Santa’s current location, his next stop, a live video feed of his route, and the estimated arrival time for each location. It also shows the total distance that Santa has traveled so far and the number of presents he has delivered.

Throughout December, the page operates as Santa’s Village, where users can play mini-games, take quizzes, watch animated videos and explore other interactive activities. For instance, players can build their own elf in Google’s “Elf Maker” game as well as host a concert with “Elf Jamband.” Kids can also learn how to code with easy and fun tutorials like “Code Boogie.”

Additionally, users can enlist the help of Google Assistant to learn about Santa’s whereabouts. You can ask, “Hey Google, where’s Santa?” or even “What’s new at the North Pole?” which lets you tune into Google’s North Pole Newscast where you can hear what Santa and his elves are up to that day.

Google Assistant also lets you call Santa himself. When you call him, Santa will be rehearsing for a concert and will ask for your musical expert advice.

And don’t forget to ask Google Assistant to tell you a Santa joke!

How to track Santa Claus this Christmas Eve by Lauren Forristal originally published on TechCrunch

To get a roundup of TechCrunch’s biggest and most important stories delivered to your inbox every day at 3 p.m. PDT, subscribe here.

Today we celebrate a bit of oversight over an industry that has been allowed to prey on those less fortunate for way too long — Devin reports that the FCC is taking a more firm hand in overseeing the prison phone system in a simple bill, giving the regulatory body the power “to ensure just and reasonable charges for telephone and advanced communications services in correctional and detention facilities.”

In other captivating news, the Daily Crunch will be back next week in a slightly diminished form, as both Christine and Haje disappear for the holidays. The full newsletter will be back soon, and the two of us wish you a very happy Christmas if you celebrate, a very peaceful holiday if you do not, and a magnificently prosperous 2023, in either case. Much love, Christine and Haje

The TechCrunch Top 4

Meta settles: After years of pushing back against a lawsuit, Meta has agreed to a $725 million settlement to resolve a class-action lawsuit over Cambridge Analytica harvesting data from Facebook users. Paul has more.
Breathe in that fresh air: Mila, the maker of a smart air purifier that came from humble beginnings on Kickstarter, scored $10 million in a round led by Electrolux. This gives it a $52 million valuation and the backing to add some smarts to a new product — a humidifier, Haje writes.
Charge it up: It looks like Tesla is #winning in a space that Apple couldn’t make work. The automaker unveiled its $300 charging mat that can recharge three devices at once, Matt reports.
The results are in: Dominic-Madori surveyed three Black investors about what they are prepping for in 2023. Read the full version on TechCrunch+.

Holiday shipping is easier this year, but the tech is still lagging

Global supply lines are in better shape than they were this time last year, but that doesn’t bode well for the future, writes Flexport CEO Ryan Petersen.

“This year’s improvements in shipping largely reflect a pullback in consumption rather than any improvement in the underlying infrastructure,” he says, noting that labor shortages, global instability and high fuel prices have created persistent bottlenecks.

“Fortunately, the data available today is rich beyond measure, and we also have the tools to leverage it in ways that can boost efficiency.”

Three more from the TC+ team:

Cloud money makes it rain: While Amazon had a rocky year, AWS remains a reliable cash cow, by Ron.
Big, clean stacks of money: Clean energy investments may close 2022 hitting new heights, setting stage for lofty 2023, by Tim.
Tearing down the Card Blanch: Pitch Deck Teardown: Card Blanch’s $460K deck for its angel round, by Haje.

TechCrunch+ is our membership program that helps founders and startup teams get ahead of the pack. You can sign up here. Use code “DC” for a 15% discount on an annual subscription!

Big Tech Inc.

We enjoyed Ingrid’s in-depth look at how decentralized social media player Mastodon is scaling as Twitter users decamp to search for other ways to post everything they are thinking. TechCrunch+ subscribers — if you’re not one, you can be easily — can also read her Q&A with Mastodon creator Eugen Rochko.

If you are a LastPass user like many of us here at TechCrunch, you might want to check your email if you haven’t already. LastPass says hackers stole some customers’ password vaults. Zack says it’s time to change your passwords.

Google isn’t taking India’s latest fine lying down. Manish reports the search engine giant is appealing the hundreds of millions of dollars in fines ordered against it over business practices on Android.

And we have four more for you:

Can there be a fair election in social media land?: Annie writes that “botched content moderation” during Kenya’s elections last year leaves other countries with questions about what social media companies, like Facebook, Twitter and TikTok, will do to uphold election integrity in Africaas their elections happen.
Persistence or annoyance?: @ElonJet creator Jack Sweeney has a new Twitter handle now, still following Elon Musk’s jet, but now delayed, writes Connie. Meanwhile, if you’re Twitter Blue, you can now upload 60-minute videos, Ivan reports. Not sure any of us will stay long enough to watch one, so good luck with those new view counts.
Separated: India’s e-commerce giant Flipkart no longer owns a stake in PhonePe, Manish writes.
This move has Tesla investors shaking their heads: Tesla’s $7,500 discount feels desperate and is “giving investors the ick,” writes Rebecca, causing one to cut its price target for the automaker.

Daily Crunch: Meta to pay $725M settlement in Cambridge Analytica data access case by Christine Hall originally published on TechCrunch

Eugen Rochko came up with the idea for and built Mastodon some six years ago during another one of Twitter’s dips. A developer who had already been interested in and was working with open source software, he got the idea for Mastodon from a federated version of a forum he’d built in high school.

That project was called Zeon Federated, and it’s no longer active. While developing that, he also built and sold a platform to manage escrow for artists around commissions.

Mastodon’s success has somewhat taken its creator by surprise. Rochko didn’t jump into this project as a power user of social media, nor is he prone to sharing much about himself. When we spoke, he dialed into our video chat from an undisclosed location. He’s never even used Instagram. If growth hackers look at building audience or revenue as an end in itself, Rochko seems to be the opposite when it comes to development.

This week we spoke with Rochko about the early days of Mastodon, its recent surge in users and how advertising may or may not factor in its future.

TechCrunch: You’ve probably seen significant growth in the last six weeks or so. Has the rate of growth maintained pace, increased or tailed off since the first days of the handover to Elon Musk? How many users and servers do you have now?

Eugen Rochko: If you look at it on the graph, we had a huge spike around the news of Elon Musk buying Twitter. And there was another spike when Musk fired most of the employees at Twitter. It’s trailed off now, but the rate is way higher than it was before October. We now have 2.5 million monthly active users across Mastodon, across 8,600 servers.

We don’t chart the growth rate, but right now, app downloads on iOS and Android are about 4,000 each per day. The highest spike we saw was when Musk fired employees — we had 149,000 downloads on Android and 235,000 on iOS. Over the last 90 days, the iOS app has had 1.8 million downloads. Android provides different figures, but in October, the installed audience for the Android app was 53,000 devices. Now, it is 907,000 devices.

I can’t give you much on whether mobile is more popular than desktop: I don’t track it. We haven’t built dashboards for that.

TC: You say “we,” but how many people do you have at Mastodon?

Rochko: I’m the only full-time employee, and the rest — five people — are contractors at the moment. I’m looking to expand the full-time team and have been working on some job listings. It’s kind of a slow process; I wish I could do it a lot faster. But it’s a new frontier for a company that has been a one-person venture for six years. It has been fine so far, but now we need more people.

TC: Is Patreon the only vehicle you’ve been using to fund it so far?

Rochko: Patreon is the main one. We built a custom sponsorship platform as well for when a business wants to sponsor us to save on Patreon fees. We also got a public grant this year from the European Commission to finance some of the work on features. But mainly, it’s Patreon.

TC: So the bulk of it is coming from around 8,500 backers on there…

Rochko: Yeah, that brings in $31,000 per month. That number has risen dramatically over the past month — it was only $7,000 last month. That’s the only reason we can even think about getting new employees.

This is the kind of scary part of running a non-profit based on donations. I’m responsible for myself if the donations dry up, but if you hire other people and the donations stop, suddenly you’re responsible for other people’s livelihoods. That’s been the stopper for getting other people as employees before now.

I think now there is some buffer, so we want to get a few more people involved.

Mastodon creator Eugen Rochko talks funding and how to build the anti-Twitter by Ingrid Lunden originally published on TechCrunch

Twitter is in crisis these days. Under new owner Elon Musk, the service has lost more than half its staff through layoffs and quitting, made erratic moves in its product and platform strategies and is facing up to reports about its financial state.

That disruption, in true tech industry style, has led to the emergence of a plethora of alternatives, some still in germination and some fully formed and waiting for their moment in the spotlight.

Among them, one of the leaders that has emerged is Mastodon — a network created on the ActivityPub protocol that runs servers itself and allows others to join and/or establish their own servers to engage with and see each others’ content.

Eugen Rochko, Mastodon’s creator — and currently sole full-time employee — said in an interview with TechCrunch that the service has ratcheted up numbers very fast, and it now has 2.5 million monthly active users across no less than 8,600 different servers. Mastodon operates a couple of these directly, and the biggest of them, mastodon.social, has 881,000 registered users, 210,000 of them active.

Rochko has closed Mastodon’s servers for new signups. It’s a move he described as a “victimless decision,” because there are so many other places to register an account and still interact with the wider Mastodon universe. Nonetheless, the move has created a curious scarcity/demand situation: People and organizations have contacted Rochko asking for access to getting accounts on his servers anyway.

“The main reason that the registration is closed right now is just that it is a big burden to the DevOps, to scale up, beyond the number of users [we have now],” he said. “I don’t want to say, ‘oh, the software is not good enough to scale’ or whatever. That’s not really the reason, it’s just a question of not having a dedicated DevOps employee right now. I can’t run all of these organizational things and the rest. It’s just easier to close registrations and ensure that the people who are already on there have a good quality of service, instead of allowing more people to sign up, and then it slows down. And then I have to stay up, sleepless nights fixing things.

“The decentralized nature, and the fact that there’s plenty of other servers to choose from to sign up on means that it’s kind of a victimless decision to make.”

Now Rochko is eyeing up the next steps for his operation.

Mastodon as it currently exists is set up as a not-for-profit organization, financed for the most part by a Patreon account that Rochko set up that currently brings in $31,000 each month — a figure that he says “has risen dramatically over the past month… from $7,000.”

Mastodon is going to remain not-for-profit, Rochko said, but it’s looking at what he describes as a split model, “like Mozilla’s, where the nonprofit will continue working on the core product, which will remain open source, nonprofit and so on, and we might start a for-profit side business for software as a service, first to provide hosting for Mastodon’s for those who desire that.”

The aim, he said, is “a sustainable and fair business… we would do just the hosting and the server would be completely under your control. And obviously, we would allow you to take take your data and move it to your own hosting provider in the future, or migrate from another hosting provider, and so on.

Unlike the approach taken by WordPress, there are no plans to incorporate ads as part of the hosted service, he said. It’s a position that seems to come out of his own sentiments about them, but he doesn’t dismiss them altogether.

“You have to consider that the fediverse nature of the network,” he said. “Anyone could develop another platform, using the same ActivityPub protocol [that Mastodon does], but with completely different software around it, with different expectations and different features. And if they wanted to build ads into it, they could, in theory.

“The question is only as a user, would you go to a service that has ads, and to make those ads effective, the service keeps track of your interests and location? Or would you just go to another one that doesn’t have that? We, Mastodon, are not interested in the ad business and implementing ads into our code. But as I said, it’s free and open source, so anyone could modify it. They’d do it at their own risk, with different business models.”

As for those operators of Mastodon servers, he said, he leaves it open to them, but ironically favors something not unlike what Musk has floated for Twitter itself.

“I think that I see a method in the sort of framework for building interoperable social media networks; you could think of an individual server as a separate social network, like Tumblr, or Instagram,” he said. “With interoperability built in straightaway, I think that it makes sense that they would be able to explore different business models, or maybe build out different features. I think that probably the fairest model that could appear in the ecosystem would be the paid accounts model. This is something in the past App.net tried to do but, I feel, did not succeed. It wasn’t clear if that was because of the paid account part, or because they didn’t really build out a good flagship product.”

He revealed that he also has been talking with investors, although for the most part it seems that a lot of those who want to give him money don’t really understand what he’s trying to do, with one recurring theme being the idea of further commercializing the platform.

“Over the years, I’ve definitely received a lot of unprompted cold contacts from various VCs. I’ve previously ignored them, but now we have Felix [Hlatky], who works as basically a CFO, but he doesn’t have the title officially, yet. Now I forward those to him and then he tries talking with them, or sometimes I tune into the calls,” he said. “We’ve tried talking to some VCs about this hosting business thing in the past couple of weeks. I have to say, though, they’re interested in somehow getting into the main product and they’re not so much interested in a sustainable hosting business. So, VCs are not going to help here. We’re not letting them into the main product in any way. So yeah, we’re probably going to have to go with an angel investor, or just crowdfunding the hosting business separately or just, I don’t know, maybe personal funds would be enough. That’s not entirely clear.”

Mastodon has been notable for how it’s been picking up attention in the wake of Twitter’s drama — so much so that it triggered a new Musk-era rule forbidding links to competing social networks, suspending Mastodon’s Twitter presence in the process.

It’s also interesting because of how it’s approaching the social space.

Mastodon is based on an open source, “federated” concept, where different servers use the same protocol to speak to each other and share content; server operators oversee the activity of the users registered and hosted on their respective servers.

It might sound a little confusing to the uninitiated, but there are tools out there to help import your Twitter world over to Mastodon and retain much of the same experience.

To follow the metaphor, the servers become like a herd of animals, Mastodons even, distinct but generally moving in the same direction. To move away from the metaphor, though, Mastodon’s ethos is far from extinct: As we’ve detailed, open source is something that a number of other social media platforms, Twitter among them, are also contemplating quite seriously.

Mastodon in particular seems to have really struck a chord. The platform’s mobile apps are seeing about 4,000 downloads per day on average, but at one recent peak saw downloads of 149,000 on Android and 235,000 on iOS.

This spike took place, Rochko said, over the days when Twitter announced a huge swathe of job cuts that wiped out entire departments at the company, including those managing communications with the media but also those working on moderation, security and curation, as well as a number of technical teams.

Indeed, that inverse variation — Twitter’s fall equals Mastodon’s rise — is one that is playing out very well for the latter right now.

The question is whether it will last. To be sure, Twitter’s ups and downs as a platform have been a hallmark of the company almost from its start, so much so that many have wondered if it’s better thought of as a utility, not a business.

Regardless, Twitter has stayed and grown. And although this latest bout has, for many, felt like “the last straw”, only time will tell if everything settles down and users eventually accept whatever becomes the new status quo, or if meaningful change in social platforms really is coming.

In any case, sometimes evolutions in tech seem to happen overnight, but sometimes they take years. (Read more about how Rochko spent those years over on TC+.)

For Mastodon, the financial aspect is one that continues to hover over it, regardless.

For one, it’s played a part in how the company has grown. Rochko may be the sole full-time employee, but there are five others working freelance as moderators on Mastodon’s own servers, in addition to Felix Hlatky on the financial front, named on Mastodon’s about page. One focus has been to figure out how to bring on more people in a stable way.

The $31,000 per month he makes through Patreon is not really enough, nor stable enough, to finance a staff, Rochko said, but he has been thinking about a secondary level of business to generate a more stable income for the business, operating a second service where it provides services to host Mastodon servers for others.

“I’m the only full-time employee, and the rest — five people — are contractors at the moment,” he said. “I’m looking to expand the full-time team and have been working on some job listings. It’s kind of a slow process. I wish I could do it a lot faster. But it’s a new frontier for a company that has been a one-person venture for six years. It has been fine so far, but now we need more people.”

How Mastodon is scaling amid the Twitter exodus by Ingrid Lunden originally published on TechCrunch

We made it! Another year (nearly!) complete. Go team!

The end of the year means many things — holidays, food, family, reflection, etc. Around these parts, it also means it’s time for the TechCrunch Favorite Things list.

Each year Team TechCrunch puts together a big list of the things that, when we look back over the last 12 months, stand out as being particularly great. As always, we don’t really restrict the definition of “thing”; maybe it’s a game that ate all your free time, or a gadget that helped you do your job, or a song that lived in your brain for weeks on end. Podcasts. People. Concepts. We’re deliberately very flexible with it, and it tends to result in an eclectic list of very good stuff.

Why do we do it? I’m… not sure! We started doing it one year and had fun, and it’s sort of just become a tradition. And if we don’t do it, people ask why. ¯_(ツ)_/¯

Maybe it’ll inspire some last-minute gift ideas; maybe you’ll find something you want to look into for yourself. Whatever the case, enjoy!

Greg Kumparak | Editor

Kirby and the Forgotten Land

When my four-year-old expressed an interest in video games, I wanted his first game to be something we could actively play together. A friend recommended Kirby and the Forgotten Land, and it’s honestly the perfect suggestion.

It’d be a fun enough game played solo — a solid, beautifully designed platformer. But for someone playing through with a kid, it’s a masterpiece. Player 1 is Kirby, Player 2 is “Bandana Waddle Dee.” My son always insists on being Kirby and… well, he’s four, so he wins. Fortunately the Player 2 role I’ve been perma-assigned never feels like a tacked-on sidekick; unlike Kirby, you can’t gobble up enemies to take on their powers, but you can kick butt in your own right all while subtly playing guardian angel/healer for Player 1 who doesn’t agree they need a health item and maybe a nap.

Despite playing for months now, we’ve yet to beat the last few levels. We keep playing through our favorites from the first half, instead — he has no interest in the game being “over,” and, honestly, I’m in no rush either.

Kyle Wiggers | Senior Reporter

Steam Deck

Valve’s Steam Deck is less unobtainable than it once was, and thank the gaming gods for that. I picked one up a few months back and it’s single-handedly gotten me back into gaming, absolutely no exaggeration.

I’ve historically been a console guy for the ease and simplicity of the experience. I briefly went the PC gaming route and, while I’ll admit that it has its appeal, I’ve burned myself out spending hours reseating RAM, messing with drivers and trying to figure out which mods might be crashing my Skyrim install. The nice thing about the Steam Deck is, while it benefits from the wealth of PC gaming resources and tools out there — it’s a Linux-running machine, after all — there’s not much tinkering required to get it up and running out of the box. Sure, you can install mods, custom utilities and the like, but especially if most of your game library lives on Steam, the Deck will deftly handle the various necessary background management processes, delivering a flow that feels familiar to this longtime console gamers.

My one nag is compatibility. The Steam Deck’s compatibility layer for Windows games, Proton, does an exceptional job for the most part, but every so often I run into a fatal error that take eons to troubleshoot. (Recently, it was with Borderlands 3, which refused to launch despite my best efforts.) To Valve’s credit, Proton receives regular updates and Steam has a generous refund policy.

“Crying in H Mart”

I’m late to this, but I picked up Michelle Zauner’s “Crying in H Mart” at a community bookstore in Boston recently and I’m thoroughly enjoying it. To pile on the praise, Zauner’s memoire is in equal parts wonderfully and tragically descriptive, relaying her experiences growing up as the daughter of a Korean immigrant mother who receives a terminal cancer diagnosis. Zauner walks us through life in small-town Eugene, Oregon, where her desire to escape from the isolating suburbs fueled her resentment and rebellion against her mother, and through young adulthood as Zauner tries to pick up the pieces before her mother passes.

It’s an emotional roller coaster to be sure, but I’d be remiss if I didn’t spotlight the ethereal-sounding dishes mentioned in each chapter. You see, Zauner and her mother were gastronomes — it’s one of the few passions that they shared in common — and Zauner doesn’t skimp on the depictions of Korean delicacies like jjamppong (spicy mixed-up seafood noodle soup), gyeranjjim (steamed eggs) and san-nakji (raw octopus). “Crying in H Mart” has inspired a few dinners in this household over the last several months, and I’m sure it will continue to for many years to come.

Devin Coldewey | Science Editor

Elden Ring

Now that this game is comfortably seated among the all-time greats, it seems superfluous to sing its praises, but in a year full of great games this one truly stood out. Awe-inspiring and generous even with its faults, Elden Ring further cemented the potential for games to be truly original and inspired art.

Warhammer 40K novels

Normally I affect the 19th-century western canon aspect, but for whatever reason this year (I was curious about the fan film “Astartes,” as I recall), I picked up a book from the Horus Heresy prequel series to the Warhammer 40K world, a fandom I’ve always disdained. Like a fool! It’s awesome and these books are awesome: tragic space operas with the confidence of decades of established lore. Impossible to find many in print but that’s why I have…

Kobo Libra 2 (+ origami case)

I have lots of e-readers but this one has become my standby for its great display, highly adjustable light, ease of customization and loading, and a clever folding case that does triple duty as protection, stand and ergonomic grip. I’ve probably read like 8,000 pages on this thing.

This specific weekly desk calendar

I’m really bad at tracking time and appointments and meetings, and I’ve tried lots of stuff. I just forget everything. What actually ended up working for me is this weekly paper desk calendar. It’s kind of prosaic, but it’s exactly the size and style I want, and turns out what I needed to get more organized during a very busy year. Plus when I tear off the page I can use the paper for shopping lists and stuff — no need to keep a memo pad around! Apparently this is what I value in life.

Paul Sawers | Senior Reporter, U.K.

Garmin Fenix 5 Plus

I was going to include the Kobo Libra 2 e-reader as my recommended piece of hardware, but alas my colleague Devin beat me to it — the Garmin Fenix 5 Plus was next on my list. I actually bought this during the initial lockdown as a replacement for a more basic Garmin watch, but I’ve realized most of its value over the past 12 months as I’ve started traveling again.

While my old entry-level Garmin Forerunner 35 was fine for tracking distance, pace and speed in my runs, the Garmin Fenix 5 Plus allows me to map out a route through the Garmin mobile app and send it to my watch, which then serves up turn-by-turn navigation to ensure I never get lost in unfamiliar territory.

On top of that, I can also download Spotify playlists to my wrist. This means I no longer have to carry a bulky smartphone around with me if I want to listen to podcasts or music. Garmin has a bunch of watches at various price-points with different features, but having directions, podcasts and music on my wrist has been a real game-changer.

“We Didn’t Start the Fire” (podcast)

I’m a big fan of history podcasts, and this was a phenomenal find for me this year.

The “We Didn’t Start the Fire” podcast takes the lyrics from the 1989 Billy Joel chart-topper of the same name, and turns each of the 100-plus historical people and events mentioned in the song into an individual episode that explores the subject matter in detail.

Sure, a history podcast beholden to the words of a single song written more than 30 years ago is somewhat arbitrary, but this is a good thing, as it leads us down paths that we otherwise might never venture down. It is incredibly varied, spanning everything from well-known public figures such as Richard Nixon and Joe DiMaggio, to movies, music, wars and even the polyester fibre known as Dacron.

The presenters also manage to nab an interview with Billy Joel himself for one of the episodes, where they get him to explain why he chose to include certain historical people and events in the song. Although the podcast includes input from subject-matter experts, the dynamics and “banter” between co-presenters Katie Puckrik and Tom Fordyce is what makes this all work. They’re often tasked with discussing dense and obscure topics, and they bring it all to life.

“Lucifer on the Sofa” (Spoon album)

I find it hard to get into new music these days, pretty much always reverting to tunes roughly from the 1960s to early 2000s era. But Spoon rarely puts out a dud, and “Lucifer on the Sofa” was another superb album from the Texas rockers, mixing amazing melodies and hooks to create a fresh, original classic.

“Watermelon” (song from Dinner in America)

I hesitated on whether to include this, as it’s by no means an all-time classic, but it’s a really fantastic little song for many reasons. “Watermelon” is an original composition from the movie “Dinner in America,” which hit theatrical release this year (it’s worth a watch, btw).

The song was written in a day largely by Emily Skeggs, one of the main actors in the movie — up until that point, Skeggs had never written a song before. Watermelon is a chugging two-minute punk ditty that reminded me that songs don’t need huge production or instrument mastery — three basic chords, a melody and a simple repetitive drumbeat that Meg from the White Stripes could probably do in her sleep. It’s a real little earworm that has been whistled in my household for most of 2022.

Natasha Lomas | Senior Reporter

Stranger Things Season 4

I wasn’t expecting too much from Stranger Things’ fourth season, with so much creepiness already spent and resonant riffing on 80s nostalgia said and done (and with the kids, er, pretty grown up these days). But the show managed to keep my attention and serve up some cracking new characters, plus a spine-tingling moment or two (injecting a Kate Bush classic into the ears of Gen Z was truly a stroke of genius). No spoilers, but the ending was a little too exposition heavy for my tastes — but, on balance, the series still thrilled. Roll on the fifth and final season.

Mastodon/the fediverse

I’m still not sure what role the fediverse will play in shaping (reshaping?) how humans talk on the internet, but in a year when the world’s richest* manbaby paid an eye-watering fortune to purge Twitter of opinions he doesn’t like, I for one am glad that an alternative like Mastodon exists. One that, by design, is better able to resist capture by billionaires. As someone put it in a tweet (or was it a toot?): Protocols not products!

*On 2022’s plus side, Musk may no longer be the world’s richest human, but there is no doubt he is the Chief Twit.

Hooper’s Beta (YouTube Channel)

Climb smarter, get stronger and — above all — avoid injurying yourself by doing dumb or just pointless stuff. That’s roughly the philosophy behind Hooper’s Beta, a dehyping YouTube channel by climber and physical therapist Jason Hooper, who takes a science-focused approach to furthering technique and defusing fitness fads — and typically ends up dispensing far more solid advice (like how to figure out if you have a rotator cuff injury or just a little shoulder impingment syndrome and which strength training exercises might help with that). He is also not afraid to do some slightly ill-advised things to his own body, like eating nothing but Huel for 30 days to find out if that’s good for a climber’s nutrition needs or (er) not, so you don’t have to…

Anna Heim | TC+ Reporter

ABBA Voyage

“Music is back,” sings one of my favorite artists, Chilly Gonzales.

He’s talking about live music, which many of us missed dearly during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. To make up for it, I went to a ton of gigs this year — none of which are exactly relevant for TechCrunch, except for one: ABBA Voyage.

You may have heard that this show uses virtual avatars created by George Lucas’ Industrial Light & Magic (ILM), but it is completely different to see them in person. I was wondering if it’d feel uncanny or unethical, but it doesn’t — probably because ABBA’s band members got their say, and introduce their younger, virtual selves in a playful way that also blends in very well with the rest of the show, which also features a live band. The residency has been extended to November 2023, so you still have time to go see it in person if you are in London at some point in the next few months.

AirTags

Having put an AirTag into my suitcase eased my pain when it got lost in transit recently — the airline didn’t know where it was for days, but I did all along, and was able to retrieve it from a huge room full of lost items. As a frequent traveller, I know I will put one AirTag in each of my luggage items from now on. Spoiler alert to my family: Some of you will find one under the tree this year!

Tim De Chant | Climate Reporter

iPad Pro + Magic Keyboard

A few years ago, when people started talking about how iPads could replace their laptops, I scoffed. I tend to like my computers full-featured. Though I’ve continuously owned MacBooks of some kind since 2006, I’ve always maintained a desktop Mac as my daily driver, so I figured the iPad-as-laptop trend wasn’t for me. I tested the waters a few times over the years, but found the experience lacking. Then I bought a Magic Keyboard.

Yes, typing is obviously better with a real keyboard. But where the Magic Keyboard has really made a difference is almost everywhere else. I’ve been using a Mac almost daily for the last 22 years, long enough that my brain no longer registers when I’m using keyboard shortcuts — it just happens. To say that my previous iPad experiments were missing command-, well, everything would be an understatement. With the Magic Keyboard, though, I can copy, paste, select text, undo, compose messages, switch apps… you get the idea… all without having to touch the screen.

This year at Disrupt, I decided to redo the experiment, this time with an M1 iPad Pro and Magic Keyboard. I brought my MacBook Pro just in case. I shouldn’t have bothered.

Alex Wilhelm | Editor in Chief of TechCrunch+

Crocs

I work from a small building in our back yard, which means that I run back and forth from the house quite often. This means slipping into, and out of flip-flops on a regular basis. Sadly, if the weather becomes even slightly inclement, such shoes are really not the jam. Enter Crocs. After seeing some Bloomberg reporter wearing pink Crocs, I decided to get a pair. So I did. In pink. And now I dash back and forth from the house with my feet better protected from mud and rain and snow and dog shit. Crocs are great. Embrace your ugly self! Wear what’s comfortable!

TechCrunch+

You know what’s good? Knowing what’s going on. You know what’s not good? Not knowing what is going on. But it’s also good to know what is going on behind the headlines and news stories. That’s where, I hope, TechCrunch+ can help out. Am I shamelessly plugging our work behind the paywall in what is otherwise a whimsical and fun post? Hell yes. Do I feel bad about it? Hell no. Because media isn’t cheap to build and our subscription services kicks maximum ass. Come check us out!

Amanda Silberling | Reporter

Defunctland’s YouTube documentary, “Disney Channel’s Theme: A History Mystery”

All of my picks for this list are tinged with recency bias: That is, at the time of writing, these are all things I have experienced in the last week. But maybe I just had a really good week in media, which is why I feel pretty confident and not too hyperbolic in saying that the YouTube channel Defunctland’s “Disney Channel’s Theme: A History Mystery” documentary is literally the best feature-length film I have watched this year.

Kevin Purjurer, the person behind Defunctland, makes elaborate, well-researched videos about theme parks gone wrong, yet somehow this hour-and-a-half-long documentary about a four-note Disney Channel jingle also serves as a bizarrely profound look into what makes good art and what duty memory serves in service of artists. I can’t spoil anything (yes, there are spoilers here), but just watch the whole thing and you’ll get what I mean. This is a work of genius. I am not doing a bit, I promise.

I Was a Teenage Exocolonist

I Was a Teenage Exocolonist is a narrative life sim following your character, a teenage exocolonist, if you will. You were conceived during a 20-year space journey from Earth to a new planet that your fellow humans are attempting to colonize, and the game begins when you’re 10 years old and stepping out of the spaceship for the first time. You can choose how to live your life for the next 10 years as you and your friends contend with the fact that maybe it’s actually a bad thing to land on an alien planet and subjugate the creatures that were already there.

See any real-world parallells!?!?!? But what really sold this game for me is that it’s infinitely replayable — I spent the weekend in a manic fugue state (perhaps an exaggeration) playing this game over and over again in an attempt to get the “good” ending. But listen, there are SO MANY ENDINGS. You can be a horrible, fascist soldier! A criminal! A farmer! An astronaut! An engineer who accidentially enables genocide by not asking enough questions! You know, normal things that happen in our normal lives.

If you want a weird mashup of Hades, Undertale and Stardew Valley, this game is for you — but play at your own risk, because I have not been able to stop playing this game — to the point that it’s actually kind of concerning how it has consumed my life. But I just got a “good” ending after four tries, so I think I can calm down and like, clean my apartment now.

Depths of Wikipedia

I went to the comedy live show of a Twitter meme account. Yes, that sentence is bizarre, but it gets even weirder the more you think about it, because how do you turn absurdist internet content into a real-life event that actually entertains people beyond just showing them memes on a projector?

Fortunately for us, Depths of Wikipedia creator Annie Rauwerda is a literal genius. The conceit of her meme pages/empire is that she goes down Wikipedia rabbit holes and finds really silly fun facts, like how the Pringles mascot Julius Pringle actually got his name because of a rogue Wikipedia edit that no one caught. I attended one of her shows last week not really knowing what to expect, and I came away watching a guy build a “Pringles ringle” onstage and a professional bagpipe musician exemplify his craft in front of a projector with a Wikipedia article, “List of nontraditional bagpipe usage.” She even got the Philadelphia chicken guy to act out the events of the 1904 Olympic men’s marathon, which… is quite the Wikipedia page to read.

I have never laughed so much at any sort of comedy event in my life.

Natasha Mascarenhas | Senior Reporter

Hu Chocolate

You know how we all picked up random hobbies and habits during the early innings of COVID-19? Well, I landed myself a sweet tooth. And I’ve been trying to get rid of it — but also empower it — ever since.

My latest obsession is Hu Chocolate, an organic sweet that would make even the milk chocolate lovers among us into dark chocolate fans. I’ve tried a few flavors, but I stick by their Salty flavor. It’s the perfect little treat to end everyday and feels a little bit more luxurious than the average handful of chocolate chips.

Cardamom coffee

Last year, I recommended Graffeo Coffee beans as a must-have for any java lover. I’m back again with another coffee suggestion: cardamom syrup. I like putting a splash of the Holy Kakow brand in my morning coffee, or a little extra if I want a sweet nightcap. It has stopped me from buying fancy lattes outside everyday, and it’s also just added the right amount of festiveness to my cup any time of the year.

Tooth & Claw: True stories of animal attacks

The host is an expert biologist who knows how to take you through some of the most insane wild animal attacks, and his two sidekicks bring a levity to the show that somehow really works. Best enjoyed on a car trip or flight or long run, but probably not something to have playing around kids or near dinner time.

Taylor Hatmaker | Senior Reporter

“Andor”

I’m not a Star Wars diehard by any means, but this show was incredible and everyone should watch it — even if you’re not familiar with the source material.

I won’t spoil anything, but it’s a wild ride that shifts settings and tones often, always deftly, and delivers some really moving performances in the process. “Andor” treats its audience like they’re smart enough to handle subtlety and even some discomfort (think Black Mirror), and the payoff is well worth it. This was some really special, smart and surprisingly inspiring television and these stories will stick with me for a while.

Aisha Malik | Consumer Reporter

“The Bear”

There were tons of popular new shows this year, but none of them stuck with me as much as Hulu’s “The Bear” — a comedy-drama TV show that delights with incredible performances, cinematic storytelling and sharp writing. The show does a great job of creating an atmosphere that draws you in almost immediately. Although it can make you feel a little anxious at times, it’s filled with moments of beauty. I won’t spoil anything, but “The Bear” should definitely be your next binge show if you want something that is both funny and riveting.

Bryce Durbin | Illustrator

My Favorite – “Tender Is the Nightshift: Part One”

In the summer, the great indiepop band My Favorite released new music for the first time in six years. The brainchild of Michael Grace Jr., “Tender Is the Nightshift: Part One” kicks off with an eight-minute dance track (“Dean’s 7th Dream”) that features Grace’s characteristic arch, despairing lyrics, delicately balancing chill synths and warm vocals. “Second Empire” (and its “instrumental dub” version) and other tracks round out this compelling EP. Dance away your sadness.

Darrell Etherington | Managing Editor

Universal Audio SD-1 mic

UA makes a lot of great audio gear, but their SD-1 dynamic vocal microphone might just be their best. Besides the super slick cream color, it’s a dead ringer for the venerated Shure SM7B — both in looks and in audio profile. It’s less expensive, though, and to my ear is better at eliminating any room or bg noise. One of the best deals in audio equipment period.

WANDRD Roam 9L sling

The WANDRD Roam lineup is a killer collection of slings, but the biggest is the 9L version. It has ample room to carry a mirrorless body, a long zoom lens and a fairly large prime as well, plus chargers and batteries. The real reason to buy WANDRD over other competing slings, however, is the neat trick it pulls off to make room for up to a 16-inch notebook: It has a double-zip back pocket with an expandable bottom to accomodate a laptop in one of its sleeves, safely and securely.

8BitDo Ultimate Controller

8BitDo’s latest Ultimate Controllers (there’s a BT version and a 2.4GHz only version) are as good or better than the first-party controllers they borrow the most from (that’s pretty much the Xbox controller and the Switch Pro controller, fwiw). These come with their own charging docks and customizable back grip buttons on top of everything else.

Miranda Halpern | Data Analyst

Breville Smart Waffle Maker Pro

You know what’s better than going out to brunch? Making brunch at home. I love getting a waffle when I go out for brunch, but I always felt like the ones I made at home were subpar…. until the Breville Smart Waffle Maker Pro entered my life. I originally borrowed someone else’s and I loved it so much that I spent the next two months debating if I should purchase my own; $280 is a lot to spend, let alone on a waffle iron, but this was worth the money. Crisp, thick, fluffy waffles in the comfort of your home for you and all of your friends. You can thank me later.

Nalgene 24oz On-The-Fly Lock-Top Tritan Bottle

If you’re in the market for a new emotional support water bottle, I highly suggest this one. It’s the perfect size to fit into the cup holder of your car, it has a lock top so it won’t spill if it’s in your bag and it’s easy to clean — yes, you need to clean your water bottles.

“Stick Season” by Noah Kahan

Stomp and Holler is back! If you’re a fan of the Lumineers, Vance Joy, Mumford & Sons or The Head and The Heart, I would recommend giving this album a spin.

Kahan entered the music scene with his debut album “Busyhead” in 2019. From there he released the “Cape Elizabeth” EP in 2020, which was his first project dipping his toes in the alt/indie genre, his sophomore album “I Was/ I Am” in 2021 and, most recently, his third album, “Stick Season.” Kahan’s lyricism, which has always been descriptive, reaches a new high as he takes us on the journey of feeling stuck while watching those from your past move on. The theme of nostalgia shows in “Homesick,” “Still,” and the title track, “Stick Season.” Kahan yearns for more — in life and in love — shown in tracks like “She Calls Me Back,” “Come Over” and “The View Between Villages.” If you’re looking for an album to blast as you drive through your hometown during the holidays — this is it.

TechCrunch’s Favorite Things of 2022 by Greg Kumparak originally published on TechCrunch

This year’s been eventful for investors and founders alike. Just as it seemed the venture capital boom of 2021 was slowing down, the startup and VC worlds spun on their axes practically overnight, birthing a new dynamic where “growth at all costs” was quickly replaced by a more measured and careful approach to business and investing.

For 2023 then, it appears investors are focusing on trends that are relatively safer and likelier to bear fruit. Xfund’s vice president, Jadyn Bryden, and Lightship Capital’s principal, Alexis Alston, told TechCrunch that they are focused on generative artificial intelligence.

“I’m looking forward to seeing how AI can contribute to scaling previously human-led areas of business, such as sales, social media, marketing and content development,” Alston said.

According to Richard Kerby, a general partner at Equal Ventures, vertical software is a good subsector to watch. “What that looks like in practice is software that provides some sort of workflow improvement to a category that enables a company to monetize via a variety of financial services,” Kerby said. “Some of the sectors that we will be exploring include supply chain, logistics, insurance, construction and e-commerce enablement.”

When it comes to funding for under-represented founders, the investors mostly agreed that not much was likely to change. While Alston said she was concerned that the numbers were going to drop, Bryden believes that more venture dollars would go to Black founders as there are “increasingly more diverse investors each year.”

“It is a slow progression,” she said, noting that more diverse-led firms are popping up to support Black founders. “Having Black decision-makers at the table can be a great way to make sure that Black founders have representation across the board.”

Read the full survey here to find out what these investors expect in 2023, which laws and policies they’re keeping an eye on and the best way to pitch them.

3 Black investors share what they are prepping for come the new year by Dominic-Madori Davis originally published on TechCrunch

For the last 24 months, Thomvest Ventures recorded headcount data for 150 Series A to C enterprise SaaS startups, and we have the numbers.

This report prepared by Eddie Ackerman, Thomvest’s strategic finance operating partner, looks at startup hiring velocity since February 2021 by region, company type and, notably, how much time passed since last fundraise.

Ackerman says he expects to see another tranche of layoffs in several weeks, after startups hold their Q4 2022 board meetings.

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Use discount code TCPLUSROUNDUP to save 20% off a one- or two-year subscription

That’s not something any worker wants to read a few days before Christmas, but forewarned is forearmed.

“For companies with a strong balance sheet, strong backers, product-market fit or low burn, now is the best time to make critical hires,” says Ackerman.

And if that doesn’t describe your company, you should already be planning to reduce headcount.

“The tough decision to freeze hiring should be made early, even if your balance sheet is in a good position,” writes Ackerman.

If you’re a founder who’s reading this: When layoffs are in the cards, you have a moral and ethical responsibility to let your employees know as soon as possible. Do the right thing.

TechCrunch+ will publish on a light schedule next week, and we’ll resume our usual cadence on Monday, January 2. I’m taking a short break for the holidays and will send the next TechCrunch+ newsletter/roundup on Tuesday, January 3.

Thanks very much for reading us in 2022. Have a very happy new year!

Walter Thompson
Editorial Manager, TechCrunch+
@yourprotagonist

How to make the most of your investor relationships in 2023

As Santa Claus refactors his list of who’s been naughty and nice, it’s also a good time for startup founders to take stock of their investor relationships.

Vidya Raman, a partner at Sorenson Ventures, has written a TC+ article with dos and don’ts for upcoming board meetings, her thoughts about which communication channels are best for different help requests and specific data points you should raise in your discussions.

“Be ruthless about how you spend your time,” she advises, “especially with your investors.”

Holiday shipping is easier this year, but the tech is still lagging

Global supply lines are in better shape than this time last year, but that doesn’t bode well for the future, writes Flexport CEO Ryan Petersen.

“This year’s improvements in shipping largely reflect a pullback in consumption rather than any improvement in the underlying infrastructure,” he says, noting that labor shortages, global instability and high fuel prices have created persistent bottlenecks.

“Fortunately, the data available today is rich beyond measure, and we also have the tools to leverage it in ways that can boost efficiency.”

Pitch Deck Teardown: Card Blanch’s $460K deck for its angel round

Fintech startup Card Blanch recently closed a $460,000 round for its pre-launch service that promises to let customers track personal spending from a centralized app.

To see why this deck was smiled upon by angel investors bearing good tidings, we’re sharing the founders’ non-redacted deck:

Cover slide
Problem slide
Market size slide
Solution slide
Product slide
“How it works” slide
Competition slide
Revenue model slide
Market opportunity slide
“Next steps” — the ask slide
“Your whole wallet in one card” — value prop slide
“Complete spending analytic in one place” — summary slide

Dear Sophie: What are the pros and cons of the E-2 and L-1A visas?

Dear Sophie,

We co-founded a startup in Colombia, and we’re thinking about opening a sales office in the U.S.! I would be moving, and my co-founder will continue to run our engineering team from Colombia.

I’m currently considering both the E-2 investor and L-1A executive visas. What are the pros and cons of each?

— Courageous Colombian

How to solve the financial close dilemma: 3 strategies that never fail

Be honest: Did you rush your November month-end close due to the December holidays?

New Year’s resolutions are hard to stick to, but because this is the slowest time of year, it’s a good time to establish healthier accounting habits.

Before running your December numbers, look for ways to automate the month-end close, advises Shagun Malhotra, a CPA and CIA who’s also an experienced auditor.

In a TC+ post, she shares three strategies for digitizing this process, along with suggestions for sub-metrics to track that will give you an accurate snapshot of your financial health.

“The data gathered in these steps will allow you to identify your business’ root issues quickly, which will then let you assess what to do next.”

3 Black investors talk about what they’re looking for in 2023

Investors are generally optimistic about tech’s long-term ability to recover, but when it comes to expanding opportunities for Black founders, Dominic-Madori Davis says they’re largely fatalistic.

She interviewed three Black investors to get their thoughts on impact investing, which trends they expect to take off in 2023 and how they prefer to be approached by founders:

Alexis Alston, principal, Lightship Capital
Richard Kerby, general partner, Equal Ventures
Jadyn Bryden, vice president, Xfund

Avoid 3 common sales mistakes startups make during a downturn

Analysts estimate that IT spending will increase in 2023, but tell that to SaaS sales teams trying to close contracts with customers who’ve been instructed to slash spending.

“What every company needs now is efficient sales,” says Anand Shah, CEO and co-founder of Databook, who explains why reactive moves like increasing sales quotas or raising prices won’t move the needle.

“Make real changes to meet your buyers’ needs. Use the macroeconomic backdrop to make the necessary sales productivity improvements.”

TechCrunch+ roundup: Headcount data study, SaaS sales mistakes, financial close strategies by Walter Thompson originally published on TechCrunch