đ¶ïž Rayban x Facebook
Whatâs happened this week in the Tech & Startup world? đ Amazon launches a new flying robot for your house, Stripe partners with Salesforce & the war for podcasting continues.
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The Grapevine Newsflash đ„
11 tech & startup stories in 128 seconds.
đ A Better Facebook? A former investor in Facebook has launched an invite-only social network thatâs designed to recreate the magic of meeting people and sharing ideas online. All users have to use their real identity to sign up & thereâs rules against disinformation and hate speech. Tough space with Facebook approaching 3bn usersâŠ
đž Stripe Partners With Salesforce. With a potential IPO looming, Stripe has partnered with Salesforce to bring its simple payment offerings to big corporates! This really is a big deal. Read more about it here.
đ° Raise Now, Pay Later. Klarna has raised $650m at a $10.6bn valuation. Whatâs Klarna? Itâs a payment product that lets shoppers buy now and pay later in interest free instalments. Keen to hear more about their vision? Watch this fireside chat with their CEO here.
đœ Flushing Capital Down the Drain? Greycroft, a high-profile VC firm that represents Mark Cuban, Robert Downey Jr, Ashton Kutcher and Gwyneth Paltrow is investing in Cloud Paper, a bamboo based toilet paper. Read more here.
đ Truelayerâs Series C. Truelayer has raised a $25m to continue expansion of its Open Banking APIs to enable fintechâs and Banks to make payments and aggregate account data. Check out our rapid fire interview with the Truelayer found here.
đ Trump Tyranny? Americans wonât be able to download TikTok or WeChat from Sunday onwards. Full story here.
đ RayBook Glasses! Facebook is working with Ray-Ban to launch a consumer set of âsmart glassesâ next year. Although itâs not clear what features the glasses will have, its widely suspected itâll be similar to Snap Spectacles or Amazonâs Echo Frames.
đ„ FinTech Can Make Money In a year where the pandemic has challenged FinTech business models, especially those of neobanks, one appears to be accelerating ahead. Transferwise, most recently valued at $5bn, just announced its fourth successive year of profitability and a revenue boost of 70% compared to last year. Impressive.
âïž Podcasting Battleground Apple has acquired Scout FM, a startup that uses AI to create radio-like stations of podcasts on various topics. The price is not yet disclosed but it represents another investment into the podcasting space by Apple, as their battle against Spotify intensifies. Cue Amazonâs inevitable entry into the space with⊠DJ Khaled.
â Prime Time Amazon launched an array of new products this week made especially for the coronavirus era. The highlight? A security camera mounted to a drone which flies autonomously around your house (slightly bizarre video of it in action here). What could go wrong? The Verge has a few important questionsâŠ
đ§ The Most Influential People of 2020. Time Magazine have released their list of 2020s most influential people â Take a look at some of the tech titans on this list here.
A Positive Spin
We donât need to tell you about whatâs going on in the world this week; but we do want to highlight companies, startups and technology thatâs being used to positive effect people and movements across the globe today.
đ”Spotify CEO, Daniel Ek, has announced heâll invest more than $1bn of his own money (around a third of his total wealth) to fund âmoonshotâ bets in Europe. Thisâll cover health, education, machine learning & biotechnology.
đ Innovations like digital brokerage firms & fractional share ownership have meant that âmore than half the racial gap in individual stock ownership has disappeared essentially overnightâ. This has important effects on politics, financial decisions and cultural identification. It could also trigger significant changes to the approach to diversity by companies themselves, including the composition of their boards.
Bonus: Our favourite marketing campaign of recent times has to be Burger Kingâs sponsorship of Stevenage Football Club (i.e. one of the worst in the UK leagues). Check out a short video that explains why here.
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