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If you told me that a company that’s charging $70 per month for multivitamins would be able to raise a $10 million round, I’d demand to see the receipts, and I’d be very curious indeed to see its pitch deck. It looks like today is my lucky day!

Rootine is the company, and the founders were gracious enough to share their pitch deck with me. Let’s figure out what the investors saw in this startup.

The company first turned up in TechCrunch’s coverage as part of the Techstars accelerator back in 2018. Anthony Ha reported that the company had 1,500 paying customers in Europe and was gunning for a U.S. expansion. It looks like that was a long journey that ultimately worked out.

Rootine’s deck is my 30th teardown — time flies! You can see the rest of them here, in case today’s read isn’t quite enough pitch decking for you.

We’re looking for more unique pitch decks to tear down, so if you want to submit your own, here’s how you can do that.

Slides in this deck

The Rootine deck consists of 29 slides, and the team tells me there have been no omissions or redactions — this is what the investors saw when they were getting pitched!

Cover slide
Summary slide
Traction summary slide
Team slide
“Why” slide
Market context slide
Market size and market trajectory slide
Problem slide
Solution slide
“Community enhances member experience” — community slide
Business model slide
“The Precision Multivitamin”— product slide
“Supported by a variety of at-home lab tests”— product slide
“Innovative form factor for nutrition products”— product slide
Technology slide
“Feedback loop”— product slide
“How it works” slide — tracking member outcomes
Customer (“member”) results slide
Product traction slide
Customer traction slide
Partnership traction slide
Competitive landscape slide
Vision slide
Product road map slide
Revenue projection slide
Go-to-market evolution slide
Advisors slide
The ask and use of funds slide
Contact info slide

Three things to love

Rootine’s slide deck is a masterclass; it covers everything I would expect in a deck. It does go deeper than I would have liked into the product, but when I looked through it again, there’s not a lot I can remove from this deck to make itmuch better. Incidentally, there’s also not a lot I would add. That’s a great sign. Let’s check out some of the highlights.

An “ask” slide

By quite some considerable margin, the “ask and use of funds” slide is the most frequently screwed-up slide in pitch decks, in my experience. This one isn’t perfect, but I’m so glad it’s there, because it helps lead the conversation for what happens next.

I wish the company had included how much money it was raising on this slide to give it a sliver of additional context. But that’s an aside; I love the clarity here. Increasing ARR and membership numbers 3x and launching eight new products is a great set of goals. I wish the company had included deadlines (yes, 3x ARR … but when?), and “key hires” and “expand teams” are too fluffy. But most startups don’t include any of this, so very well done there.

One little detail, though: 30% growth, 40% tech, 20% community, 20% ops. Oops. I love the realism that everything in startups can run over budget, and I believe in the wisdom of raising more than you think you’ll need, but I’m pretty sure most investors would prefer the use of funds to add up to 100%.

As a startup, the lesson here is to show that you have clarity aroundwhy you are raising money, as well as what you’re going to accomplish with the money. It’s embarrassingly rare to see either of these things clearly outlined — and it’s literally the whole purpose of a pitch deck. Rootine’s example above is a good jumping-off point. Make it your own; make it good.

Traction galore

Rootine has a few traction slides in its deck (one that makes me unhappy, but we’ll get to that one), but I love how it flexes its numbers in various ways to show how well the company is doing. Slide 19 showcases some really cool traction:

An 18x increase in two years is objectively powerful. Not having numbers on the axes is a bit of a cheat (why‽), but the trend is clear, so that’s encouraging. The slide I really want to celebrate Rootine for, though, is the “summary” slide far earlier in the deck. Slide 2:

I’m a sucker for a good business-by-the-numbers-type slide. I’m a little confused by the inconsistencies. TechCrunch reported that the company had 1,500 or so customers back in 2018, so the 2019 “launch” seems odd. It’s also risky to show projected numbers as part of slides; having it in two colors (blue for “real” numbers and perhaps gray for the projected numbers) might have felt more honest.

I’d also have liked to see more detail about the numbers behind the numbers. Acquisition costs, margins and all the numbers that drive a business forward. Especially at a Series A, where a company is explicitly setting itself up for growth, it would be good to have more detailed breakdowns of how the various key metrics have evolved over time.

How has the customer acquisition cost (CAC) evolved over time? How has the initial spend per customer and assumed lifetime value per customer shifted? What about the costs of goods sold (COGS), etc.? As an investor, this is where I would spend a lot of my due diligence time, so it makes sense to include most — if not all — of that as part of the presentation. If you’re positioning yourself as being ready for growth, show that the numbers support that!

As a startup, consider how you can use the numbers driving your company to tell the story, both of what you have done and what you are about to do. If you have meaningful numbers that truly show the growth of your company — use ’em to ram that point home. What you are doing is hard; brag, brag, brag!

The path to $1 billion

The whole purpose of a startup is to scale outrageously fast. The exponential curve Rootine is showing in this curve looks impressive, and I am unsurprised that the investors got excited. I also suspect investors would ask how at this point. I think making a claim to be a $1 billion business within six years is bold and exciting. But you’d best show up with the receipts.

I hinted at that above; I’d want to see the numbers that drive this aggressive curve. Doubts aside; if you’re playing the VC game and you’re raising growth capital, this is precisely the sort of claim you need to be able to make, backed with some confidence and the numbers to back it up.

In the rest of this teardown, we’ll take a look at three things Rootine could have improved or done differently, along with its full pitch deck!

Pitch Deck Teardown: Rootine’s $10M Series A deck by Haje Jan Kamps originally published on TechCrunch

As part of Airtable’s decision to cut 20% of staff, or 254 employees, three executives are “parting ways” with the company as well, a spokesperson confirmed over email. The chief revenue officer, chief people officer and chief product officer are no longer with the company.

Airtable’s chief revenue officer, Seth Shaw, joined in November 2020 just one month before Airtable’s chief product officer Peter Deng came on board. Airtable’s chief people officer, Johanna Jackman, joined Airtable in May 2021 with an ambitious goal to double the company’s headcount to 1,000 in 12 months. The three executives are departing today as a mutual decision with Airtable, but will advise the company through the next phase of transition, the company says. All three executives were reached out to for further comment and this story will be updated with their responses if given.

An Airtable spokesperson declined to comment on if the executives were offered severance pay. The positions will be succeeded by internal employees, introduced at an all-hands meeting to be held this Friday.

Executive departures at this scale are rare, even if the overall company is going through a heavy round of cuts. But CEO and founder Howie Liu emphasized, in an email sent to staff but seen by TechCrunch, that the decision – Airtable’s first-ever lay off in its decade-long history – was made following Airtable’s choice to pivot to a more “narrowly focused mode of execution.”

In the email, Liu described Airtable’s goal – first unveiled in October – to capture enterprise clients with connected apps. Now, instead of the bottom-up adoption that first fueled Airtable’s rise, the company wants to be more focused in this new direction. Liu’s e-mail indicates that the startup will devote a majority of its resources toward “landing and expanding large enterprise companies with at least 1k FTEs – where our connected apps vision will deliver the most differentiated value.”

The lean mindset comes after Airtable reduced spend in marketing media, real estate, business technology and infrastructure, the e-mail indicates. “In trying to do too many things at once, we have grown our organization at a breakneck pace over the past few years. We will continue to emphasize growth, but do so by investing heavily in the levers that yield the highest growth relative to their cost,” Liu wrote.

Airtable seems to be emphasizing that its reduced spend doesn’t come with less ambition, or ability to execute. A spokesperson added over e-mail that all of Airtable’s funds from its $735 million Series F are “still intact.” They also said that the startup’s enterprise side, which makes up the majority of Airtable’s revenue, is growing more than 100% year over year; the product move today just doubles down on that exact cohort.

Current and former Airtable employees can reach out to Natasha Mascarenhas on Signal, a secure encrypted messaging app, at 925 271 0912. You can also DM her on Twitter, @nmasc_.

Airtable chief revenue officer, chief people officer and chief product officer are out by Natasha Mascarenhas originally published on TechCrunch

Greetings from…somewhere. As I mentioned the other week, I’m taking a few weeks off. It’s the first time off I’ve had this year and the most consecutive days I’ve taken off in 15+ years of being a tech journalist. It’s been a hard/weird last few years, and burnout has a way of sneaking up on you while you’re not looking.

I’m trying to ignore the creeping sense of guilt about not doing a couple of proper year-end newsletters this time out. I’ll be back right after the Christmas break, though, and we can debrief on 2022 then, just as we ease into full freak-out mode pre-CES (the level of real robotics news at what is ostensibly a consumer show always feels like a bit of a crapshoot).

I also have some passing thoughts about the need for more focused robotics journalism out there that I’ve been wanting to get down on paper. That’s not to say there aren’t good people out there doing good work. But there’s a lot more that needs to be done to mainstream coverage. Apologies for pasting some thoughts over from LinkedIn. If you read those posts, feel free to skip the next couple of grafs. Consider this a minor manifesto of sorts.

Quoting myself here (I know, I know):

If you run a robotics startup and want coverage, come ready to answer difficult questions. Categories like crypto have been done a disservice by some breathless coverage. It’s our job to ask some hard and sometimes uncomfortable questions.

A good investor will have already prepared you for some of them, like market fit and ROI. Even seemingly simple questions like “Why does this need to exist?” and “Why are you the right person/team to execute it?” can be difficult for many founders to answer.

They shouldn’t be. You should be asking yourself these questions every day. If you can’t find meaningful answers, you might not be the right person for the job. Accepting that and pivoting isn’t failure. Ignoring it and carrying on ultimately might be, however.

I’ve been genuinely surprised that more major publications aren’t investing in robotics coverage. Now is the time to starting building coverage of robotics/automation. The category has largely been done a disservice, as it’s been more of an afterthought. I got my start writing about gadgets (it’s still a big part of my role at TechCrunch), so I completely understand the impulse to fall back on Skynet and Black Mirror jokes, rather than having a nuanced conversation.

But questions about ethics, automation/labor and the like are important to bake into these conversations. Asking difficult questions isn’t combative. It’s not doing the industry a disservice (unless said industry can’t stand up to scrutiny). It’s an important part of growing. Otherwise one day you wake up and have a Theranos or FTX on your hands.

Sometimes these things are scams from the outset, but oftentimes it’s the product of someone who believed in their mission, but ultimately didn’t get enough pushback along the way and began believing their own lies.

Asking the right questions comes with being immersed in a topic. Knowing the lay of the land, talking to the right people and finely honing your BS detector. I’m not here to be anyone’s cheerleader, but I’m also not in the business of criticizing for criticism’s sake. Coverage should reflect the product and the people who make it — for better and worse.

All right, that’s enough bloviating from me for a while. For the next couple of weeks, I’m leaving you in some very capable hands. We’ve got some insight from some very smart folks in the space. Coming up over the next couple of weeks are PlayGround Global’s Peter Barrett and UC Berkeley’s Ken Goldberg.

Q&A with Joyce Sidopoulos

Today we’re kicking things off with MassRobotics’ chief of operations, Joyce Sidopoulos, who was also a great help for my recent trip to Boston. See you on the other side.

TC: What was the biggest robotics story of 2022?

JS: There are a number of stories that are changing the landscape of the robotics industry, such as Hyundai’s announcement of a $400 million AI and robotics institute powered by Boston Dynamics, but one of the most impactful stories is Amazon’s acquisition of iRobot.

What are your biggest robotics predictions for 2023?

The adoption of robotics will continue to grow at a rapid pace, in spite of, or possibly due to, the predicted economic downturn. The last few years have proven the worth of many robot systems, such as those used in warehouses.

How profound of an impact has the pandemic had on robotics?

Very. The pandemic highlighted the value that robotics can provide, and spurred on more development and commercialization. The pandemic led to the realization that domestic manufacturing needs help and our supply chain is broken, areas which robotics can help solve. Industries began to adopt collaborative robots to help with workforce shortfalls and that will continue.

How much of an impact has the macroeconomic environment had on robotics investing?

We are definitely seeing that it is taking startups longer to raise rounds, but so far there are funds still available. MassRobotics recently held an investor demo day for about 30 of our startups and we had a great turnout of interested investors.

What underaddressed category deserves more focus from robotics startups and investors?

Climate change and sustainability. We will need to make significant strides in using technology to impact some of our global challenges, and we believe robotics can play a growing role, from wind turbine inspection to automated recycling.

How will automation impact the workforce of the future?

The best applications for robots today are where robots work in conjunction with human workers. Companies that have been successful in deploying robots have increased their workforce. Robots will replace dull, dirty and dangerous jobs. Those are the undesirable jobs that are not easily filled.

Are home robotics finally having their moment?

We are watching Amazon’s acquisition of iRobot closely. We believe there are plenty of opportunities for robots in the home in the future.

What more can/should the U.S. do to foster innovation in the category?

Increase the support for the startup community by investing in innovation centers (like MassRobotics) and create incentives for small and midsized firms to adopt robotics to allow them to be competitive on the world stage.

Critical mass by Brian Heater originally published on TechCrunch

The FTC announced Thursday that it would sue to block Microsoft’s acquisition of gaming giant Activision Blizzard. Microsoft announced plans to buy the company, which has been plagued by sexual harassment and discrimination allegations and labor disputes, back in January for $68.7 billion.

The deal would be mark a seismic shift in the gaming industry — Activision Blizzard owns hugely popular games like the Call of Duty franchise and World of Warcraft — but the massive size of the deal and the prevailing anti-consolidation sentiment meant that it was due for some intense regulatory scrutiny from day one.

In its statement, the FTC cites concerns that the deal would “enable Microsoft to suppress competitors” to Xbox, including its paid Game Pass subscription service and cloud gaming services.

“Microsoft has already shown that it can and will withhold content from its gaming rivals,” FTC’s Bureau of Competition Director Holly Vedova said. “Today we seek to stop Microsoft from gaining control over a leading independent game studio and using it to harm competition in multiple dynamic and fast-growing gaming markets.”

PlayStation maker Sony, Microsoft’s console rival, has loudly objected to the proposed merger, which would consolidate some of the world’s most popular games under the Xbox’s banner. In recent weeks, Microsoft has been attempting to stave off the regulatory threat by promising to give Call of Duty equal treatment on the PlayStation and even agreeing to bring the franchise to Nintendoif the deal goes through.

The FTC is suing to block Microsoft from buying Activision by Taylor Hatmaker originally published on TechCrunch

Quick commerce grocery delivery companies are having a moment, and not necessarily a good one.

An industry that was on fire at the beginning of the global pandemic, mainly due to people forgoing IRL grocery shopping, has slowed as shoppers returned to brick-and-mortar stores.

As a result, several so-called q-commerce companies pumped the brakes. Gorillas said it would acquire competitor Getir and plans to inject $100 million into the company to help it out. In May, Getir announced layoffs. Gopuff announced plans to pull back in Europe, while JOKR left the U.S. and abandoned two Latin American markets as well. Perhaps most notably, Instacart paused its IPO.

While these kinds of announcements became more frequent this year, Duffl co-founder and CEO David Lin believes his quick commerce startup is an outlier in the sector.

How, you ask? By tapping into a model that focuses on 10-minute delivery of higher-margin goods, like snacks and convenience items, via e-scooter in more dense areas, enabling college students, called “Admirals,” to lead and run their own seven-figure businesses on campus.

That strategy has paid off so far: Duffl went through Y Combinator in Winter 2020 and has since raised over $13 million, including a $12 million Series A, led by Volition Capital in October 2021.

Duffl started off at UCLA, where Lin was an undergrad, and is now on the campuses of Arizona State University, University of Arizona and University of Texas, some of which are already cash-positive. Admirals and their employees fielded 35,000 orders in September from 11,000 students across those campuses and managed 69% growth in new customers from referrals during the same month, Lin said.

He spoke with TechCrunch about how he’s made quick commerce work for Duffl while others struggled. The following has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

TechCrunch: We’ve seen some quick commerce companies struggle lately. What are the challenges to this market and how have some companies gotten it wrong?

David Lin: It’s certainly a difficult time for everyone, but especially players in this space, and in a down market, where you’re fundamentally dealing with low-gross-margin products, like groceries, produce and perishables. In addition, dealing with such a small time frame for delivery, you run into a lot of labor-related expenses, like transport, pick and pack costs, insurance and real estate overhead, that are very difficult to scale.

It sounds like it has much to do with the way a delivery company sets up its business model, correct?

Certainly. I would say that history doesn’t necessarily repeat itself, but it does rhyme. I started doing this in 2018, and it was quite interesting to watch the evolution through the pandemic.

Duffl’s David Lin dishes on why traditional rapid grocery delivery is not working by Christine Hall originally published on TechCrunch

Google today announced two new performance settings in its Chrome browser: Memory Saver and Energy Saver.

Modern browsers eat up a lot of memory and while that’s not a problem if you have 32GB of RAM, Chrome using multiple gigabytes of your memory can quickly slow your machine down if you’re on a machine with lower specs. The Memory Saver mode promises to reduce Chrome’s memory usage by up to 30% by putting inactive tabs to sleep. The tabs will simply reload when you need them again. The Energy Saver mode, meanwhile, limits background activity and visual effects for sites with animations and videos when your laptop’s battery level drops below 20%.

The features are now rolling out with the release of Chrome 108 and will be available globally for Windows, macOS and ChromeOS in the coming weeks. You can exempt individual sites from going to sleep or, of course, turn these features off completely.

Google’s announcement comes a day after Microsoft announced that its Edge Browser put 1.38 billion tabs to sleep in September alone. According to Microsoft, sleeping a tab in Edge typically saves 83% of the memory it would normally occupy. The company rolled out its version of these features, which can automatically put tabs to sleep after five minutes of inactivity (can can bring this down all the way to 30 seconds of inactivity), a couple of years ago and then once again improved it with the release of Edge 100 earlier this year. Edge also features a gaming mode, which can automatically reduce CPU usage when it detects that you are playing a game on your PC.

Chrome gets memory and energy saver modes by Frederic Lardinois originally published on TechCrunch

When Ankur Nagpal sold Teachable for a quarter of a billion dollars, he felt lucky. Then, he quickly felt lost when trying to navigate the financial systems of a country he wasn’t born in and learn the institutional language often only spoken fluently by the historically wealthy.

It would be a few years of self-employment, and building a venture firm later, before Nagpal returned to the moment as one of the early catalysts for his newest startup, Ocho. The company, launching publicly today, wants to make it easier for business owners to set up and manage their own 401(k) retirement accounts.

Personal finance is hard – and that’s a tale as old, and difficult to disrupt, as time. And while Nagpal agrees that there’s no “north star” company that has shown how to tackle finance literacy at scale, he’s hoping that Ocho’s 10-person team may just have a not-so-boring wedge that changes that.

Ocho is joining the several fintech companies out there that aim to modernize, and really rebrand, the retirement account away from traditional providers like Charles Schwab or Fidelity, or expensive solutions like lawyers and consultants.

“I’ve started exploring the space, and we realize everyone – like Robinhood to Coinbase – is just spending unsustainable amounts of money to acquire customers, but are making no money themselves and continually sort of need these large funding rounds just to exist,” Nagpal said. “I’m actually expecting there to be a very rough 6, 12 or 18 months for fintech companies specifically.”

Ocho’s twist from competition, he thinks, is in its market focus. “There’s so many companies targeting startup founders and their wealth – there’s literally a new one launching every month or two all backed by big name VCs, but no one is focused on the business owner that is otherwise doing well but is not a startup founder or a startup employee,” he said.

Instead, Ocho is leaning into Nagpal’s background of working with creators when he was building Teachable. Teachable helped creators build revenue streams, Ocho wants to help those same creators take their earnings and invest, harvest and scale them in a smart way.

“At Teachable, we helped these people make money online and now there’s lots of places for creators, freelancers and entrepreneurs to make money online – but how do we help them think about building wealth?” Nagpal said. The long-term vision for Ocho is to offer products, beyond solo 401(k)s, that help business owners build wealth.

Human Interest is one of Ocho’s closest competitors; raising $200 million at a $1 billion valuation last year. Nagpal says that Ocho differentiates itself because its focused more on individuals, freelancers and creators, instead of Human Interest’s target of small and medium-sized businesses.

For now, Ocho is charging a flat $199 annual fee to help individuals start their retirement account. It takes about 10 minutes to set up, and 48 hours to get final confirmation.

The big challenge for the startup is getting the right solopreneurs to care about their retirement accounts. Its look for people who have income-generating businesses, but don’t have any full-time employees. If you have a side gig alongside your full-time job, you can create a 401(k) just for the side hustle, but can’t put full-time income into the retirement account.

Nagpal thinks he can nail early adoption through smart education material and outreach, referring to personal finance trends on TikTok as an example of consumer demand for more information. He says that 40% of the Ocho staff is working on marketing or education, and that the balance will be retained even as the company scales.

If education is so important to getting Ocho to work, one may wonder why it’s launching with a fintech product. The answer is simple: deadlines. Users need to make a retirement account by December 31, 2022, if they want one for 2023 – which puts the fintech in a relevant, but time pressed, position.

Nagpal isn’t worried about the seasonality of the 401(k) product because of the upcoming product roadmap, which includes the education product, investment flows into the retirement product like being able to invest in startups and ETFs, and even HSAs, often described as a 401(k) for healthcare.

To power that ambitious product spree, Ocho has raised $2.5 million from Nagpal’s own venture firm, Vibe Capital. The entrepreneur says that he raised the $60 million debut fund for Vibe Capital with the idea that he would incubate a startup or two out of the firm, which materialized today now that it owns 20% of Ocho.

Nagpal admitted that the idea of a founder using his own venture firm to seed his own startup may appear to be the “mother of all conflicts of interest” but reasoned that it was everything but. He emailed all LPs in his fund about the investment, got a unanimous yes, and ended up raising at a much lower price for the startup than if they had gone out into the fair market. It’s still uncommon to see founders sell a company, start a venture firm and then use that same venture firm to seed their next company.

Perhaps the unique connection between Nagpal’s first company, to his firm, to his newest startup, could hint at what his approach to personal finance may be: diversify across multiple vehicles, redefine what a supercharged investment could look like, and keep on learning.

Ocho wants to rethink (and rebrand) personal finance for business owners by Natasha Mascarenhas originally published on TechCrunch

Twitter is rumored to re-roll-out its flopped Twitter Blue subscription tomorrow, which will once again enable people to pay real cash money to get a blue check next to their name. Hopefully, this time, it won’t lead to mass impersonation and misinformation, but who can say? Yet already, some users are noting that when they click on an existing blue check (not of the $8 variety), they’re served with a pop-up that says, “This is a legacy verified account. It may or may not be notable.”

This is especially funny when it appears on accounts like The White House, or even Elon Musk’s Twitter itself. To be fair, is Elon Musk really notable? He didn’t even found Tesla.

This new messaging hasn’t rolled out to all users yet, which is normal when a feature is testing or not all the way populated — I don’t have it, while a colleague who is on Twitter’s beta TestFlight app does. Meanwhile, Christine broke the news to me that on her Android phone, she sees TechCrunch’s Twitter as being “notable in government, news, entertainment, or another designated category,” whereas my own account “may or may not be notable.”

Listen. I don’t take myself too seriously. As I write this, there are three Pokémon plushies on my desk (one of which can be worn as a hat), and I went to a tabletop roleplaying convention this weekend where I had serious conversations with strangers about how one of my hobbies is pretending to be a warlock. I am also a bit tired because I stayed up too late last night watching a YouTube documentary/investigation about the Disney Channel theme music (which is an excellent piece of journalism that I am jealous I did not produce and definitely made me think hard about the failures of legacy journalism compared to the work of independent creators). What I’m saying is, I know I am Just Some Guy. But somehow, being told that you “may or may not be notable” is worse than just being told that you are not notable. I’m in limbo. Which one is it!?

Then again, my Twitter blue check was always a bit of a fluke, so “may or may not be notable” really feels apt for where I’m at in my career. I only got verified in the first place because my friend worked at BuzzFeed and knew a guy (I was freelancing at the time and did not have those institutional perks). Now, that same friend temporarily deactivated her account only to try to log back in and find that it no longer exists, but that is a different story (…DM me if this has happened to you, too). The point is, the verification system has always been a bit of an arbitrary mystery, especially among journalists — I even know some freelancers who deliberately never applied for verification because they worried it would make people think they’re a bigger deal than they are and thus expose them to more harassment. Unfortunately, I am too ego-driven to have that kind of foresight. What can I say? I’m a Taurus.

I’m still skeptical that Musk’s new verification system will actually work, and won’t just implode into another mess of discourse that somehow draws attention to how the cost of insulin is actually a significant public health issue in the United States that we should really be paying more attention to. Some brands on Twitter have that sweet, grey official badge, and verified accounts can’t currently change their display names (which is why I am #RatVerified forever). But will those safeguards really protect us from the chaos that is sure to unfold?

At least in this state of Schrödinger’s relevance, I’m in good company. What do Donald Trump, Elon Musk and I have in common? We all may or may not be notable. We also all attended the same university, but that’s something I try not to think about too much.

Schrödinger’s blue check: according to Twitter, I may or may not be notable by Amanda Silberling originally published on TechCrunch

Amazon is bringing a TikTok-like shopping experience to its app. The company today announced the launch of Inspire, a new short-form video and photo feed that allows consumers to explore products and ideas and shop from content created by influencers, brands, and other customers. The feature is designed to draw consumers’ attention away from apps like TikTok, where brands can directly market to consumers, in order to drive sales on Amazon.com instead.

The retailer said the shopping feautre will initially roll out to select customers in the U.S. in early Decmeber, and will become broadly available to U.S. customers in the months that follow.

The launch follows tests earlier this year when Amazon had been spotted experimenting with a TikTok-like shopping feed in its app, which then had its own navigation button at the bottom of the Amazon mobile app.In the version launching now, that high-level placement in the main navigation remains the same, however the Inspir feed will now be accessible with a tap of a light bulb icon instead of the diamond icon that was seen in tests.

To get started with Inspire, customers will open the Amazon Shopping app and tap Inspire’s icon. Upon first launch, they’re prompted to choose from over 20 interests, including things like makeup, skin care, pets, gaming, plants, hiking, interior design, travel, running, and more in order to personalize their Inspire feed.

While Inspire focuses on short-form video content, it also offers support for photos, making it something of a hybrid between TikTok and Instagram. Like Instagram, you can double-tap anywhere on the screen to “like” the content with a red heart. However, you scroll through the Inspire experience much like using TikTok’s vertical video feed, where you swipe up from the bottom to see the next video. Engagment buttons are also off to the right side of the screen, as on TikTok.

When you see something you like, you can tap on small buttons at the bottom of the window which link to the product on Amazon. Initially, a tap on these buttons will pop-up the product in an overlay window on top of the video, but a tap on “See all details” will take you to the item’s product page where you can read more, make a purchase, or add it to a list.

Over time, Amazon says the feed will better customize itself as Inspire learns more about the user’s interests by tracking their engagement and likes. Longer-term, the retailer plans to add more shoppable features to Inspire, as well as additional in-app functionality and content, to further improve the product.

“We invent every day to make shopping easy and fun,” noted Amazon Shopping director Oliver Messenger in a statement about the launch. “Inspire is our new shopping experience that connects Amazon customers with shoppable content created by other customers, the latest influencers, and a wide range of brands. In just a few taps, customers can discover new products or get inspiration on what to buy, all tailored to their interests, and then shop for those items on Amazon,” Messenger said.

The company has already lined up a handful of Amazon Influencers to post on Inspire, including Mae Badiyan, Practically Pursia, and others. The creators will be able to earn money from customers’ purchases via the Amazon Influencer Program.

“My audience wants engaging videos that introduce them to new products, which is why I’m excited to use Inspire to spotlight my favorite everyday essentials with the convenience of shopping those items immediately on Amazon,” noted Badiyan.

In addition, brands can post to Inspire, including vendors and sellers enrolled in Brand Registry with an active Brand Store, says Amazon.

Amazon has a long history of taking a popular format from social media in order to engage shoppers and inspire purchases. In previous years, it offered a Pinterest-like feature called Interesting Finds after first testing the idea in other variations, including as Amazon Collections in 2013, then Amazon Stream in 2015. In later years, it hosted an Instagram clone called Amazon Spark, but it finally wound down that program in 2019 after only a couple of years. Spark’s primary stakeholder, Amazon VP of Consumer EngagementChee Chew had also departed at the beginning of 2019.

Elsewhere on the site, Amazon has drawn inspiration from live-stream shopping with Amazon Live and even once tried a YouTube copycat where anyone could upload videos.

Unfortunately, most of Amazon’s takes on social media tended to be fairly bland, as the content only exists to push products. Meanwhile, people browse social sites for more than just ideas about things to buy. They want to engage with creators, learn new things, laugh, and be entertained. It’s not clear if Inspire will be able to deliver on these factors, despite the shift to video.

Amazon Inspire is currently only available in the Amazon mobile app on iOS and Android, initially to select customers.

Credit: Amazon

Amazon launches Inspire, a TikTok-like shopping feed that supports both photos and videos by Sarah Perez originally published on TechCrunch

Reddit is rolling out its annual end-of-year Recap experience to give users a way to reflect on the time they spent on the platform in 2022. Your personalized Reddit Recap will show you a variety of stats, including a summary of the time you spent on Reddit, the content you most engaged with and the communities you viewed or joined. This year, Reddit is giving users a shareable card that displays your experience on the platform.

Users can click on the Narwhal icon under their profile in the Reddit app or the navigation bar on desktop to see their personalized Recap. Once you launch your Recap, you will see a series of shareable cards that include fun stats, such as your most upvoted comment and if you are team cat or dog.

“Once users reach the end of their Recap experience, they have one last new and unique opportunity to see how they stack up against other redditors by being rewarded a Superpower Reddit Ability,” Reddit said in a blog post. “Based on earned Karma points, the card places redditors into one of three categories of Rare, Epic, or Legendary. To add to the experience, it also displays their most recent Avatar, the top three visited communities, and assigns a generated persona gathered from the topics they were most interested in.”

You can download and share your personalized card to see how you stack up against other users. If you don’t want your username or avatar on the card, you can choose to have the card say “Redditor” and display a generic avatar instead of your own.

As for Reddit as a whole, the company says users created more than 430 million posts, which is a 14% increase year-over-year. Reddit also saw more than 2.5 billion comments, up 7% from from last year. Reddit also revealed that the most-viewed community was r/amitheasshole.

End-of-year recaps have become increasingly popular due to the notable success of Spotify’s annual Wrapped experience. In the past, Reddit’s yearly recaps only used to include information about the platform as a whole, but since last year the Reddit has joined other companies in giving users shareable data about their browsing habits. Reddit’s recap experience comes a week after Spotify, Apple Music and YouTube rolled out their own end-of-year personalized experiences.

Reddit’s end-of-year Recap experience rolls out with personalized shareable cards by Aisha Malik originally published on TechCrunch