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Last week was a great week in startup news, and Henry wrote a particularly good summary of everything that happened, including the Twitter purchase of Elon Musk, Meta’s troubles, and a minute of silence for self-driving cars. — Christine and hi

The australiabusinessblog.com Top 3

• Flying chonk goes wheeeeeeeee: While we were all distracted by Elon Musk’s other pet project, SpaceX launched a Falcon Heavy rocket for the first time in three years. Aria has more.
• Swipe right for total chaos: Glitch or not, Instagram has something to complain about. A number of users woke up this morning to suspended accounts. we love Aishaheadline, “Instagram is giving Twitter a run for its money as the most chaotic social network today.” We agree.
• circle of friends: Egyptian fintech Money Fellows have deposited $31 million in new funding to, what? Tage describes as “digitizing money circles”, which is where people essentially save and borrow together as a group.

Startups and VC

Venture capitalist politician Bradley Tusk recently spoke at a australiabusinessblog.com Live event about how startups should approach regulation, in a session called “How to Launch a Startup in a Regulated Market.” Dibbs CEO and co-founder Evan Vandenberg joined Tusk in the conversation. The event is embedded here and is both free and well worth watching.

Invygo, a startup operating in the UAE and Saudi Arabia, has raised $10 million in its Series A funding as it works to scale up its car rental service in the region. The Middle East startup has raised $14.3 million so far, Ivan reports.

And, as always, there’s a handful of extra stories. Only 4 this time – it was 5, but then a PR person decided to move the embargo on a story that had already been published, and Haje got salty and grumpy about it.

6 reasons why you shouldn’t join an accelerator

Image Credits: Richard Drury (Opens in a new window) / Getty Images

As director of Techstars startup pipeline, Saba Karim spends much of his time touting the many ways entrepreneurs can benefit from joining an accelerator.

But is it the right choice for any founder?

“Keep in mind that financing will solve your money problems, but not everything else,” he says. “You’ll still have to figure out how to recruit customers, find the best talent, build an incredible product, build a great advisory board, and get to a product-market fit.”

Three more from the TC+ team:

australiabusinessblog.com+ is our membership program that helps founders and startup teams stay ahead of the curve. You can register here. Use code “DC” for a 15% discount on an annual subscription!

Big Tech Inc.

darrell writing that Mark Zuckerberg should drop all that metaverse nonsense and “create a new Twitter” makes us want to respond with “bite your tongue!” But really, as he puts it, “cloning the characteristics of its rivals” is something Meta is good at, plus it has the best chance of replicating user base and monetary value as well. Zuck is unlikely to take the bait, but never say never.

It is indeed a Twitter world, and we just live in it. First, Devin writes that Elon Musk just dissolved Twitter’s board of directors, making him the sole owner; then Ron follow up on what Bret Taylor, co-CEO of Salesforce, can do now that he’s not on the board. Sarah reports the problems of Twitter Blue, namely that the subscription service Blue senses that it is no longer bringing in green. In the meantime, Amanda writes about what happens when Twitter starts charging for that little blue tick, and Natasha L reports that Musk may be trying to get Vine back. During the weekend, Rebecca wrote about layoffs at the company.

Don’t worry, there was plenty of other news:

• clear mind: Try Google’s new doodle game to get all that Twitter out of your head. Have you ever watched your kid play Snake.io and wondered, “Will I like that?” Google got into the Halloween spirit with today’s doodle, where you become a ghost and collect ghost flames while playing with friends or random people. Aisha writes.
• The heat is on: Amazon scraps top seller Appario in Indian market after some retailers claim sellers have been given preferential treatment, manish reports.
• We have a ticket to drive: WhatsApp users in Bengaluru can now buy train tickets via QR code, Jagmeet reports.
• Bed, Bath & Break: Bed, Bath & Beyond confirms a data breach that occurred when a hacker gained access to an employee’s hard drive, carly writes.
• Request that data: Ron reports on Pinecone’s new vector database that can handle hybrid keyword-semantic searches.