š The Airbnb Comeback
Whatās happened this week in the Tech & Startup world? š Salesforce buys Slack, the fight for equality gets a boost & Ikea adopts drones.
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The Grapevine Newsflash š„
11Ā tech & startup stories in 118Ā super short seconds.
š° Salesforce has acquired Slack for $27.6bn. Read the TechCrunch analysis here, or hear Slack CEO Stewart Butterfield explain what makes slack unique in this short video here.
š¦ Stripeās New Big Play. The payments giant has launched āStripe Treasuryā, a banking as a service play to enable firms to send, receive and store funds super easily. This could be a real game-changer.
š¼ $11m for Equality All Raise, the non-profit promoting diversity in tech, has raised $11m from the likes of Melinda Gates, Reid Hoffman and others. Thisāll push forward their mission to have 18% of venture investors to be female by 2028.
š± Remember Blackberry? Blackberry now operates in the business and information security market. Its shares rocketed up earlier in the week following an announcement it was partnering with AWS to jointly develop a system to monitor vehicle data. Read the full story here or watch this cool 8 minute video on the rise and fall of Blackberry here
š¤ Ikea Bots! Ikea is using drones to check inventory levels in their warehouses. Take a look here.
š The Airbnb Comeback The company has announced their intention to IPO at a valuation of $35b - a significant recovery from the $18bn valuation they raised on in April. Itās a very different world, and business, from a year ago and you can view the main takeaways from their investment prospectus (S-1) here.
š 2020 Takes Another Legend Entrepreneur and investor most well known for founding Zappos, a shoe and clothing company, has died at the age of 46 in an accident. Heās considered a visionary of e-commerce who sold Zappos to Amazon for $1.2bn in 2009. His obituary is worth reading.
š If you canāt beat them, join them Britain has launched a new āDigital Markets Unitā that is modeled on the very tech companies that it will police. It is designed to be a nimble, dedicated regulator that can fix market abuses quickly. Letās see whether itās up to the job.
š¹ The Future of Zoom The CEO of Zoom told conference attendees this week that future video calls could include the ability to feel your hand being shaken or smell coffee in the virtual space. He also talked about the āZoombombingā phenomenon, how he struggled to raise money and how it took him 9 visa attempts to get into the US.
š°Ā Other Newsletters Exist? This week we subscribed to Seedtable, a newsletter coveringĀ European tech trends and its impact on society. It's read by over 13,000 founders, investors and operators. Give itĀ a try by clicking on the link here.
š¹ļø Gaming In One Picture The global gaming industryās revenue is set to hit $165bn this year. Starting with the very first commercially successful game in 1972, Pong, weāve come a long way. Check out the history of gaming in one single chart here.
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