“Innovation Doesn’t Have A Colour” - Colab Capital
First off, thank you to everyone who emailed and messaged us after the newsletter last week. We had some great initiatives sent to us and founders looking for support. If you are able to help in any way - shoot us a note and we’ll link you up with others who are looking for advice and help.
One report that caught our eye was ‘Diversity in U.S. Startups’ by Rate My Investor & Diversity VC. A few worrying statistics included: only 9.2% of funded startup founders are female, only 1% of founders were black, and 82% of teams were all male. There’s a lot more we can, and should, do to improve these statistics.
What’s happened in the last week in the Tech & Startup world? 🌍 An InsurTech unicorn filed for an IPO, tech giants turned the other cheek to facial recognition & Just Eat gobbled up the competition.
If you haven’t already….sign up below 👇
The Grapevine Newsflash 🔥
11 tech & startup stories in 152 seconds.
🦄The Unicorn Algorithm? CB Insights has used an algorithm to predict 50 future unicorns (companies valued at $1bn +). The algorithm combines a company’s financial health, the amount of traction it has, and the strength of its market. See the list here.
Zoom…does bad? The video-conferencing app reportedly closed the account of a group of Chinese activists in the US after they held an event to commemorate the Tiananmen Square Massacre. It’s now been reactivated but triggered concerns about free-speech and foreign government intervention 🔐
Tech Giants Drops Facial Recognition 🚨 Microsoft & IBM have both stopped selling facial recognition technology to the police. Amazon has also put a 1 year pause on selling their product. This comes after reports that these systems have worrying inaccuracies when it comes to minority groups and the tech has been used for ‘mass surveillance, racial profiling’ and ‘violations of basic human rights and freedoms’.
An Insurtech IPO? 🍋 Lemonade, the $2bn Softbank backed insurtech company, has filed for IPO! Interested to see which other tech companies have IPO’d this year? See the list and get some info here.
Coconut Crowdfunds:🥥 UK Challenger Bank Coconut is crowdfunding £700k at a £12m pre money valuation. Check out their pitch here.
Next-Gen Gaming 🎮 Sony announced the launch of their PS5 console which they describe as a ‘paradigm shift’. It includes 3D audio, a new controller & innovative design (which has got a mixed reaction). Check it out here.
DuckDuckWhat? 🦆 Does Google finally have some competition in the search space? Take a read of this Wired article on how DuckDuckGo is fighting back against Google! Our recommendation? Check out Ecosia, which uses some of the ad revenue from your searches to plant trees.
Screen Time 📱 Kids aged 5-15 are spending 85 mins per day watching YouTube, but this is down year-on-year due to the impact of TikTok which has risen to 80 minutes. This could be set to increase as YouTubers struggle with increased regulations and loss in monetization, resulting in a possible exodus to other platforms. The most played game? Roblox. Read more here.
Gobbling up the Competition 🥡 Just Eat Takeaway has announced their acquisition of GrubHub. This gives them a foothold in the US and makes them the ‘largest’ food delivery business outside of China. Uber attempted to purchase them but conversations stalled around price & anti-trust concerns. The latter still exists, with several parties concerned about consolidation of the market and the effect on consumers.
Record Timing Last week we covered the launch of TikTok’s competitor, Zynn. Now, after 3m downloads, Google has taken them off the Play store and Apple is investigating due to the platform being full of videos that appear to be stolen from creators off other platforms 🚫 Their business model has also been likened to a ‘pyramid scheme’. A lot can change in a week.
A Public Secret The notoriously secretive startup, Palantir, is expected to file for an IPO later this year. Co-founded by Facebook investor and Trump advisor, Peter Thiel, they identify trends in disparate personal & commercial data-sets predominately for the CIA and other security agencies 💾 They clocked $1bn in revenue last year and were last valued at $25bn so this is a big one. Learn about them here (hint: they’re pretty controversial).
A Positive Spin
We don’t need to tell you about what’s going on in the world this week; but we do want to tell you about the companies (especially startups) doing their part to support this movement globally.
💰 Swiss startup HMCARE has raised $1m to commercialise their transparent, environmentally friendly face masks - find our more here.
🎉The founder and former CEO of Reddit, Alexis Ohanian, stepped down from his board position last week and requested the company fill his position with a black board member. This week, Reddit announced Y Combinator CEO Michael Seibel as his replacement.
🏦 A trio of black founders has set out to raise a $50m fund called Collab Capital which will solely invest in other black founders. They’ve already made their first investment and had 420 founders apply for their pitch competition. A fund to keep an eye on.
Bonus Story 🔥
Now that masks are becoming the norm, it’s strange to not be able to see facial features when people are speaking. Check out one game developer’s answer to this problem here 😷
Why need a favour! 🙏🙏🙏
We’re trying to reach as many people as possible with our quick-fire news.
If you know somebody who might enjoy what you’ve just read, please please share it with them using the button below!
If you share it on LinkedIn, be sure to tag us so we can say thanks!
Got some thoughts about The Grapevine? Shoot us an email at founders@onthegrapevine.co.
Want to show your support? Share the newsletter or give us a like.
Don’t follow us on LinkedIn?
Over & Out,
Nick & Louis