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Time to do the Friday dance! We’ve mentioned our TC Sessions: Robotics virtual event a few times, but we have some good news for event fans. Hold on to your blockchains and hone those crypto wallets – we’re also doing a australiabusinessblog.com Sessions: Crypto in November! Nice weekend! See you all on Monday. — Christine and hi
The australiabusinessblog.com Top 3
- Words mean everything: Microsoft recently came under fire from developers for the way it formulated a new policy that prohibits profiting from open source software, and while the company rolled back those policies, Paul gives an idea of what all this will mean.
- No snakes and frozen statues here: Christine writes about Medusa’s $8 million seed round to tackle Shopify with its open source ecommerce tool for small businesses to grow their business beyond the basic API implementations provided by marketplaces.
- PLATE: No, it’s not today’s Wordle answer – we checked – but fans of the game will be happy to hear that the popular guess-the-word computer game is being turned into a board game, Ivan writes.
Startups and VC
“We have entered an unprecedented combination of crypto winter and broad macroeconomic instability, and we need to prepare the company for the possibility of a prolonged downturn,” said Devin Finzer, CEO of OpenSea. Luke reports.
The question bounces around AlexThis morning’s ghost is why venture capital is slowing down when so much capital has been raised by VCs to invest? (Read about it on TC+, our subscription product.)
NGL and Sendit apps are problematic, Sarah writes, for using deceptive tactics to trick their young users into thinking they were getting engaged from friends when they weren’t.
Start the weekend with move along with this wildly dark and strangely menacing EDM track from Rüfüs Du Sol, while skimming the best of the rest:
- Hello, is that nothing? Brian just posted his review of the Nothing Phone (1), reporting that it’s “a refreshing change of pace in a smartphone market that has lost a lot of its sense of fun.”
- Hello, WYD: The race has begun, with a number of startups racing to build crypto-native, consumer-friendly messaging platforms for web3, reports Connie.
- Shields up: With her new startup, Granitt, Runa Sandvik aims to help people at risk, such as journalists and activists, as well as politicians, lawyers, refugees and human rights defenders, with threats they face in their work, Bag reports.
- You get a credit card, you get a credit card: Stori offers credit cards to underserved populations in Mexico. It has raised $50 million in equity at a valuation of $1.2 billion, writes Mary Ann.
- They’re really going to post: Vektor Partners raises new $126 million fund to look specifically at sustainable mobility companies, reports Mike.
- They are the birds, and the bees, and the flowers, and the cattle: Systemiq raises $70 million to fund early-stage climate technology founders, reports Harris.
Running Your Startup in a Bear Market: Become Unmistakably Fundable
Image Credits: Eoneren (Opens in a new window) / Getty Images
Every founder is looking for ways to save money right now, but a laser focus on saving money instead of creating efficiency will only delay the inevitable.
According to Kraig Swensrud, founder and CEO of Qualified, in July 2022, investors will not support companies that cannot demonstrate their competence in five basic KPIs.
“We’re not going to go back to the sugar levels of the past decade in a hurry, but with integrity, strong leadership and operational efficiency, we can not only survive, but thrive.”
(australiabusinessblog.com+ is our membership program that helps founders and startup teams move forward. You can register here.)
Big Tech Inc.
Brian writes that after testing drone delivery in California, Amazon is moving to the Lone Star State — that’s Texas, all of you — to begin delivering in the town of College Station, which is home to Texas A&M University. When Texans look up to the sky now, it gives new meaning to “the stars at night are big and bright.”
As one of our colleagues noted, TikTok wrote a quite long post in effect announcing that the chief security officer has stepped down from his position. Aisha reduces the news to a more manageable length.
All Apple Music subscribers out there have gotten another perk with Apple Music Sessions, which provides access to audio recorded in Apple music studios around the world. Country stars Carrie Underwood and Tenille Townes were the first to try, Lauren writes.
Natasha L gave us a good headline today with her story about a proposal from European legislators to make sharing medical data across borders easier, but in a way that is also secure.
Oh, and Bungie is now officially part of Sony, Taylor reports.
In case you missed it, our colleagues were hard at work yesterday, and here are some late-day stories we don’t want to miss:
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