🐅 “Capital Canon” vs. The Tiger
Apple takes on Klarna, Facebook pledges $1b to creators, and Revolut becomes the UK's most valuable startup
So, what happened this week in the Tech & Startup world? 🌍
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The Grapevine Newsflash 🔥
11 tech & startup stories in 161 super-duper short seconds.
🍏 Apple Pay Later. Bloomberg has reported that Apple is working with Goldman Sachs on a ‘Buy Now Pay Later’ feature that will work with Apple Pay. This is Apple’s second credit product (following the flop of its credit card). Read more here. 🍏
💸 Cash4Creators Facebook will pay $1bn to creators in the next year and a half in an effort to capture a segment of the growing ‘creator economy’. Influencers will earn money by using specific FB/Instagram features or hitting milestones. This is similar to both TikTok & Snapchat’s approach to promoting usage and engagement. Will the money be enough?
💂The Two Generals Problem. A few years ago Deliveroo had a bug where for one evening, all customers received exactly double what they ordered. Why? Watch this brilliant video, that explains in simple terms, the computer science problem that caused it. Video here.
💻 India’s Amazon! Flipkart has raised $3.6bn at a $37.6bn valuation. What’s the size of the prize of Indian e-Commerce? According to Bain, India’s e-commerce market will reach 300m shoppers by 2020. Read more here.
🏠 Consolidation in Digital Mortgages? Two of the UK’s top digital mortgage brokers were acquired on the same day this week. Trussle was acquired by ‘Better’ (essentially Trussle’s US competitor) and Mojo Mortgages was acquired by RVU (the owners of USwitch & Confused.com). Something spooky is going on here.
💰 New Fintech Funding. Revolut has become the UKs most valuable startup, raising £569m from Softbank at a £24bn ($33m) valuation. Revolut reported losses of £201m last year. Who’s running the show over at Revolut? Sifted created a really cool org chart which you can check out here. Read more about the fundraise here.
🏦 Bitcoin Boost Jack Dorsey’s Square is creating a new business focused on decentralised financial services, based on Bitcoin. This is a big step-forward in the legitimisation of DeFi, but shouldn’t come as a surprise considering Dorsey’s support of Bitcoin over the years.
🐅 “Capital Canon” vs. The Tiger A few years ago, Softbank entered the venture world and shook it up - investing billions into the likes of WeWork, ARM, and Boston Dynamics. However, now they’re being disrupted themselves - by Tiger Global. Their super power? Speed. They’ve invested in over 120 startups already this year and are raising a brand new $10bn fund. Read all about it here.
🎮 Netflix & Game It was a big week for video gaming. News from Netflix suggests they’re hiring an executive to lead their new division, and they expect to add titles to the platform in the next year. Meanwhile, game publisher Valve introduced a new portable gaming device that will rival the Nintendo Switch (but with the power of a gaming PC or console for $400). We miss the PSP to be honest…
🚀 2 Billionaires and a Teenager Virgin founder, Richard Branson, reached space last week in the VSS Unity. This was 17 years in the making and most importantly… he beat Bezos to space. To make matters worse, it turns out the person who paid $28m to join Bezos in his July mission can’t make it. Instead Bezos will be joined by an 18 year old student and son of Somerset Capital Partners CEO who also bid in the auction.
🏙 China's Smart City Dominance. Check out this 2-minute article from Wired on how sophisticated smart city technology is in china.
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Over & Out,
Nick, Louis, & Loki