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Hello and welcome to the Daily Crunch on October 19, 2021! We’re just over a week away from our SaaS event, which means we’re in the midst of preparation. I just received a call for this panel which particularly fascinates me, for example. The trick will be to narrow down my list of questions until it fits within the 30 minutes available.

In other TechCrunch news, we have a huge dive into Automattic, the company behind WordPress which also owns Tumblr, which our former parent company (Verizon Media) owned before our parent company’s parent company (Verizon) sold us. and that we become Yahoo. It’s very complicated, but the Automattic TC-1 is amazing. Enjoy! – Alexis

The Top 3 TechCrunch

• Google abandons new hardware, software: In the wake of Apple’s event yesterday, Google jumped into hardware action today. If you want smartphone news, we’ve got you covered. If you want Pixel Pass ratings, we’ve got it. Want to know more about the new Android 12? Here is. Hell, there’s even an AI angle.
• Chinese venture capital has an epic quarter: In light of the regulatory uproar as the Chinese government makes sweeping changes to its tech landscape, economy, and culture, you would have been forgiven for expecting venture capitalists to slow down their role when it comes to investments. startups in the country. But, no, it is precisely and exactly not What happened. So we dug.
• A massive “stalkerware” leak puts the telephone data of thousands of people at risk: The last of our own Zack Whittaker is not Well news, but it’s very important news all the same. According to our cybersecurity expert, all kinds of personal information can “be taken from a person’s phone due to a security issue in widely used consumer spyware.”

Startups / VC

What is a startup? Recently, there has been a new debate on this still-hot topic on Twitter. Maybe we should just say that any company that has raised $ 50 million is no longer a startup? This is another thing ? Something between a startup and a unicorn?

I bring up all of this because I don’t know what to call Instacart. Not really. It just lost $ 350 million to buy a different startup – part of a deeper move in technology fueling physical retail – but maybe the two companies weren’t startups? Something to ponder. (Feel free to reply to this email with what you consider to be the line “no longer a startup”, if you like. I’ll see it.)

• OK, but surely the companies that raise $ 1 billion rounds aren’t startups? It would make gorillas not a startup. Yes, the Berlin-based on-demand grocery and dark store delivery operator just raised nearly $ 1 billion in a single round, valuing the company at just over $ 2 billion. Considering the somewhat modest valuation figure next to the amount of the increase, we have questions, but the investment is still net bullish for the current boom in grocery delivery startup business that we have. seen.
• BluePallet proves that there are endless spaces to build for tech startups: By our own Marie-Anne Azevedo, BluePallet is an “online marketplace connecting manufacturers with the chemical industry” and has just raised $ 5 million. Think of all the other industries that could use better links with manufacturers. I mean, there are at least a few dozen vertical SaaS games out there, aren’t there?
• ITaaS: If you are familiar with Justworks’ HR efforts, you will understand Electric. It’s Justworks for IT. Justworks, in case you didn’t know, handles human resources for other companies. Electric is doing this for IT and just raised $ 90 million.
• Figma lowers the price of its whiteboard tool: Figma is best known for its design software, but the company has also created a whiteboard tool called FigJam. It competes with Mural, we think. Either way, Figma wants more people to use it, so that keeps the price down. Since we tend to see software prices shifting the other direction, it marked us. Jordan crook, which covered the news, linked it to a larger product expansion story forming at Figma.
• AIaaS: A startup called Mage wants to offer AI tools that product teams can use, without having to ask for help from scarce data science resources. And the company just got $ 6.3 million for its efforts. Mage fits into the software theme we’ve been following for some time of technology products that help non-developers do more on their own.
• Wonolo proves that building for regulars can be big business: While it is all the rage to create software tools for rarefied areas, everyone needs a little help. Wonolo is proof that you can build for non-engineers, for example, and still do well. The company, which focuses on helping hourly workers book jobs, just raised nine figures.
• And because their team asked nicely, Carly Page covered for us the recent SOC Prime round. The Boston-based startup working in the threat detection market has just raised $ 11 million.

How our startup boosted productivity with the “get s *** done” day

One day every two weeks, “Travelpayouts employees set clear goals and are assigned specific, usually non-trivial, tasks with little or no communication involved,” writes Ivan Baidin, director of Travelpayouts.

Getting S *** Done Day allowed the team to tackle “shelved” projects that might have seemed like little potatoes: rebuilding lifecycle emails, improving analytics and optimize working hours.

Completing each of these “forever postponed” tasks generated additional gains, Baidin says. “It’s something that we really appreciate.”

This article contains strategic and actionable advice for implementing a GSDD program that includes lessons learned when identifying problems with experience. This is a classic TechCrunch + “how-to”.

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Big Tech Inc.

The best take of Apple’s event yesterday had nothing to do with laptops or chips. They were Siri and Apple Music. Who would have guessed?

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