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The discussion is: On in the newsroom on whether people would be happy to pay between $8 and $20 a month for their blue checks on Twitter. Alex’s opinion was particularly sharp… “Not in the mood to fund your vanity project,” indeed. — Christine and hi

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Startups and VC

TouchBistro, an iPad-based restaurant management platform, has secured $110 million in growth funding from Francisco Partners to accelerate its growth, expand its product pipeline and make some strategic acquisitions. Christine reports.

How’s this for some dodgy rhymes:

Prepare to write off: Inflation could be the downfall of R&D tax spending

Image Credits: Fancy/Feather/Corbis (Opens in a new window) / Getty Images

The US federal government has been making R&D tax credits available for decades, but this year will see a major change that will affect startups across the board.

Previously, R&D expenses could be amortized up front, but now “that expenditure has to be amortized over 5 years for domestic research and 15 years for foreign research,” said tax attorney Andrew Leahey.

Because so many startups “make the majority of their R&D costs in their first year of operation,” many could wait “the equivalent of a lifetime” to recoup those costs.

High inflation has stalled efforts to repeal the write-off requirement, so Leahey shares several tactics companies can use “to prepare for the possibility of the rule taking effect.”

Three more from the TC+ team:

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Big Tech Inc.

As always, we’ve got all the Twitter news fit to post. We promise to keep it to a minimum today because there’s other great news to share. We do want to point out, however, that Elon Musk likes to flesh out his thought process in tweet form now, so news changes when the wind blows.

Here’s what you need to know today: Musk continues his plans for Twitter Blue and ad-free news articles (both by Ivan), while Amanda reports the company’s chief customer officer, Sarah Personette, who resigned today. The move is quite surprising, as she tweeted positively about a conversation with Musk last week. Meanwhile things are happening in Mastodon, Sarah writes.

And we have five more for you: