Thursday, May 19, 2022, it’s the last day of our unique Mobility event. Tomorrow we make the journey to the vile streets of the world wide web, and you can still join us virtually! — Haje and Christine
The blog line Top 3
Tl;dr: We know you don’t have 32 minutes to read the new manifesto from the President of Meta Global Affairs, so Natasha read it briefly. In short, the future of the metaverse, excuse us, ‘metaverse spaces’, is uncertain and complicated and needs a truckload of developers to do it. We still don’t have the 411 on how Meta plans to monetize the metaverse, especially, as Natasha points out, because the company does a lot of tracking and profiling. That might be in Nick Clegg’s next manifesto. We’re here for it. What happens when a vertical farm breaks the code?: Spoiler alert, it’s delicious! Oishii started selling strawberries from its New Jersey facility for $50 for eight to 11 berries, and with a new facility up and running, the company can now bring that down to $20. Not yet on par with what we get at the grocery store, but if food prices keep going up, they may eventually meet in the middle. Reverse the rhythm: Could technical valuations be lower than they need to be? That’s certainly the argument Alex is making. One chart shows how Okta’s stocks are selling even below even in early 2019 – before the pandemic and before all earnings multiples went sky-high. He gives some examples of why the tech sell-off may have gone too far.
Startups and VC
The Y Combinator team told the founders to strap in and prepare for the worst. “If you plan on raising money in the next 6-12 months, you could raise at the height of the downturn. We recommend that you change your subscription,” Manish said.
Over the past few days, we at TC Sessions have immersed ourselves in the world of mobility. Here are the top three takeaways from Nuro’s great session, distilled by Rebecca.
Haje did a teardown of BoxedUp’s $2.3 million seed round pitch deck for blog line Plus. It has some really elegant stories and fixable quirks; you’ll pick up a tip or two from this story for your fundraisers, so come check it out!
Some more:
Spend now, pay later: Untapped Global wanted to rethink the collateral gap for African companies by allowing small businesses to use their current earnings as collateral, Mike reports. Home is where the buffalo roam: Belong, a startup looking to rock real estate management, just raised $50 million to increase its footprint, Mary Ann reports. A little bit of this, a little bit of that: Framework’s user-repairable laptop gets an upgrade. It’s a little ironic at first glance, but Brian explains why it makes sense. Brian reports flying over the Sahara: A new deal sets a lofty target to deploy 12,000 of Wingcopter’s 198 drone systems across Africa over the next five years. A budding romance: Brian is on a roll today, including over Sony’s $200 LinkBuds earbuds launch. Game on, my wayward son: Andreessen Horowitz introduces a $600 million fund for gaming investments. Lucas reports that the new vehicle, called Games Fund One, joins other industry-specific arms at a16z, including the crypto and bio divisions.
Dear Sophie: Is there anything I can do to speed up the EAD renewal process?
Dear Sophie,
I have an L-2 visa as a dependent spouse of my husband’s L-1A.
My EAD (work permit) expires in May – we applied for an extension of my visa and EAD a few months ago. How long does the current process take?
Is there anything I can do so that my employment is not affected?
— Career Oriented
(blogline+ is our membership program that helps founders and startup teams get ahead. You can sign up here.)
Big Tech Inc.
WhatsApp’s new business app should have businesses on cloud nine. The latest version of the Business API is free, which will attract smaller companies, but it also takes minutes instead of weeks to implement and reduce some of those pesky server costs.
In Netflix news, we were initially excited about the prospect of a “Mystery Box” feature. Admittedly, maybe we’re putting too much on a pedestal. It turns out it’s a way for kids to rewatch their favorite shows more easily. In addition, Netflix is also rolling out some extra features to make content more accessible – think subtitles and languages.
Twitter has a new crisis misinformation policy that warns tweets deemed “misleading” in times of crisis and prioritizes those on high-profile accounts or tweets that have gone viral.
Here are a few more for your Thursday:
More information is being revealed about the Buffalo gunman and how he used social media in the days leading up to the incident that left ten dead and three injured.
