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Oh hey, and welcome to the Daily Crunch for Wednesday! Today, the entire office is proverbially buzzing with robotics. Proverbial, because we’re not sure if we actually have an office right now, and if we do, we don’t know who’s there. We might be buzzing in Slack.

Anyway, tomorrow is the big day! TC Sessions: Robotics is finally with us! You can still get a (free!) ticket before the event. This is the agenda, and these are the companies pitching at the event. Come with us – we’ll hang out in the chat, and we might even pop up on the virtual stage from time to time.

Oh, and with a title like OK, fear not: the contenders are still getting venture capital, just you know you’re in for a treat with today’s episode of the Equity podcast. — Christine and hi

The australiabusinessblog.com Top 3

• ‘Exploring New Efforts’: Scott Keough, Volkswagen’s U.S. CEO, is stepping down from the automaker’s position to take on a similar role at Scout, which makes electric pickup trucks and SUVs, Jaclyn writes.
• That’s not cold brew: To trust hi to get on his slightly caffeinated soapbox in his short review of Spinn, “the $1,000 coffee maker for people too lazy to learn about coffee.”
• Puff, puff, pay: There in australiabusinessblog.com+ land, Anna highlights a market analysis of cannabis trading company Dutchie’s new Dutchie Pay product that allows you to pay digitally for cannabis when purchased from one of the dispensaries the company has partnered with.

Startups and VC

Ex-NBA and Team USA basketball star Michael Redd is now a co-founder of 22 Ventures. In his latest australiabusinessblog.com+ column, he advises not abandoning founders in a recession and suggests 3 ways to support your portfolio.

In the meantime, hi question the wisdom of changing your startup’s name to something that can’t be easily trademarked, as exemplified by GetHenry changing the name to Cycle.

Let’s dish out some more newsy goodness:

• I’m going to try at least a bite: Meatable is a cultured meat company and has just shown its first product – synthetic sausages, reports Paul.
• I will have one like this: Anita reports that crypto startup Blockdaemon is continuing its acquisitions, this time picking up Sepior.
• I will have a thousand: Tedooo is designed to stimulate and create global trading communities through partnerships between sellers and buyers, Aisha reports. It just raised $3 million to scale up its social network for buyers and sellers.
• I will have 50 million of them: Our long-estranged brother Crunchbase has raised $50 million to further develop its startup ecosystem database, Kylea reports.
• I’ll take 3 billion: Christine and Natasha M worked together to cover So. A lot. New. Company. Funds, which, across all new funds, represent a total of approximately $3 million in new capital ready to be deployed in the ecosystem.
• I’ll take a virtual one: The Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) hijinks were one of the notable success stories from the early days of the NFT craze. The Founders Are Back Sharing Their ‘Otherside’ Metaverse Plans With Luke.

Fundraising Tips for Startups and Medium Startups in 2022

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

Given the current circumstances, best practices for fundraising and building relationships with investors are less relevant than they were a year ago. At the time, the promise of early growth was enough to help the founders close the seed and Series A rounds.

Today, startups with long sales cycles that are not cash flow positive may not even qualify for follow-up investments.

If you’re curious about what kind of startups investors do (and don’t) want to watch, Yamin Durrani, CEO of Kami Vision, has written an extensive post about the changes he’s going through between fundraising in Q4 2021 and Q3 2022.

“Don’t panic, VCs to be interested in investing now – just in a few areas,” he writes.

(australiabusinessblog.com+ is our membership program that helps founders and startup teams move forward. You can register here.)

Big Tech Inc.

The Indian government claims that Chinese smartphone makers, including Xiaomi, are evading taxes. But even in the midst of that battle, Xiaomi announced that it was shipping more than 200 million smartphones in India, manish reports.

That is not the only company doing business with the Indian government. Amazon is also facing a setback after an Indian court approves the bankruptcy of its partner Future Retail. Jagmeet writes. Speaking of Amazon, Kylea reports that the company today introduced its new Alexa developer tools, while Ivan writes about Amazon’s new partnership with Skullcandy to offer dual smart assistants.

Netflix was in the news today, and Lauren dropped three stories about them. One story is about the company’s bad news about losing subscribers, and the other two stories provide an update on the ad-supported tier and an Animal Logic acquisition.

In the meantime, carly writes that Google Drive is in the spotlight after it emerged that Russian hackers are using the software to hide malware.

Here are some others we think you’ll like: