Welcome back to The TechCrunch Exchange, a weekly startups-and-markets newsletter. It’s inspired by what the weekday Exchange column digs into, but free, and made for your weekend reading. Want it in your inbox every Saturday? Sign up here. Thank you for clicking on this email. With a subject line like that you are legend for…
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When SoftBank announced its first Vision Fund back in 2017, TechCrunch gawked at the size of the fundraising vehicle and its $100 million minimum check size. Noting a few of its early deals, we wrote that “the party is just getting started.” Little did we know how accurate that quip would become. The Vision Fund…
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Shares of Square are up more than 6% today after the American fintech company reported a staggering $5.06 billion in revenue in its Q1 2021 earnings report, far ahead of an expected tally of $3.36 billion. By posting the huge revenue beat, Square grew 266% compared to its year-ago Q1. Because that’s the sort of…
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Welcome back to The TechCrunch Exchange, a weekly startups-and-markets newsletter. It’s broadly based on the daily column that appears on Extra Crunch, but free, and made for your weekend reading. If you want it in your inbox every Saturday morning, sign up here. Ready? Let’s talk money, startups and spicy IPO rumors. TechCrunch isn’t a public-market-focused publication. We…
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Welcome back to The TechCrunch Exchange, a weekly startups-and-markets newsletter. It’s broadly based on the daily column that appears on Extra Crunch, but free, and made for your weekend reading. A week ago TechCrunch covered Pico’s $6.5 million funding round and described it as “a New York startup that helps online creators and media companies…
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To close out the week, a short meditation on value, or, more precisely, how assets are valued in today’s markets. Do you recall the pre-direct-listing hype Coinbase enjoyed? After reporting its estimated first-quarter financial performance, interest in the domestic cryptocurrency trading giant ran red-hot. When Coinbase set a $250 per-share direct listing reference price, it was…
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The investment landscape for insurtech startups is off to a hot start in Q2 2021. Since the end of the first quarter, we’ve seen several players in the broad startup category announce new capital, including Clearcover, Alan, Next Insurance and The Zebra. But, as anyone who’s familiar with startups that offer insurance-related products and services knows,…
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A stunning first quarter in venture capital funding was not restricted to the United States; Europe also had one hell of a start to the year. According to data from Dealroom and Crunchbase News, an investor, and an analyst from PitchBook, European startups put together an impressive fundraising haul. The venture capital world kicked off…
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Coinbase’s direct listing was a massive finance, startup and cryptocurrency event that impacted a host of public and private investors, early employees, and crypto-enthusiasts. Regardless of where one sits in the broader tech and venture world, Coinbase storming north of a $100 billion valuation during its first day of trading was the biggest startup happening…
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Microsoft’s huge purchase of healthtech AI company Nuance led the technology news cycle this week. The $19.7 billion transaction is Microsoft’s second-largest to date, only beaten by its purchase of LinkedIn some years ago. For the AI space, the sale is a coup. Nuance was already a public company, but to see Microsoft offer a…
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