🎲 WallStreetBets & Turbulent Markets
What’s happened this week in the Tech & Startup world? 🌍 Invites to the new $1bn social app, WallStreetBets leads the headlines & lessons from Facebook’s growth 📈
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The Grapevine Newsflash 🔥
13 tech & startup stories in 175 super short seconds.
🔉 A New Social Unicorn Audio-first social network, Clubhouse, has raised a $100m Series B led by a16z at a reported $1bn valuation. This is almost unheard of for an app with no revenue. We’ve been on it the last few weeks and we’re hosting a room every Friday to discuss this week’s news… It is still invite-only but we’re giving some away to the first 5 people who share The Grapevine on LinkedIn and tag us.
🕹️ Twitch’s Brilliant Year Twitch, the online streaming platform that Amazon acquired for $1.1bn, had it's the best year yet. The site clocked 17bn hours of streaming in 2020, up 83% from 2019. Read more about Twitch’s year here or get the inside scoop on why Amazon acquired twitch here.
🤑 Fast Fintech Funding A startup that allows users to buy online with one click and aptly named ‘Fast’, has raised $102m from Stripe and others. This comes only 10 months after their Series A (also led by Stripe). This is one to watch.
🏦 JP Morgan to launch a digital bank in the UK. If it goes well, they expect it to be a model for expansion into other countries. Will it shake up the industry or be a bit of a let down? Read more here.
👨🏫 Professor Twitter? They’re rolling out a new API platform to give academic researchers easy access to Twitter data. This is a super cool step towards transparency. Read more here.
⬆️ How Facebook Grew Chamath Palihapitiya gave a fascinating talk back in 2013 about how he helped Facebook get to 1bn users. Chamath led ‘Growth’ at Facebook before becoming a Twitter-famous investor. Check his talk out here.
🛴 Self Parking Scooters? Spin, the scooter company owned by General Motors, is testing electric scooters that can be remote-controlled in order to free up pavement space. See them in action here.
🚗 Profits at Tesla The world’s most valuable automotive company has posted its first full-year profit of $721m on $31.5bn in sales. However, their stock price dropped a few percent as Elon Musk scored a $267m payout and the average selling price of Teslas fell by 11%.
☀️ The Next Silicon Valley? Miami vs San Francisco is a big debate currently. With it’s great weather, proximity to New York & Europe, diverse population & low taxes, it’s clear Miami is on the up. Mayor Francis Suarez has become famous for his use of Twitter to attract high-profile people to the city. The latest push comes from Softbank, who announced a $100m fund to invest into Miami-based startups. Anyone up for a beach day?
💡Getting Things Done! Everyone wants to be more productive. Our advice? Read "Getting Things Done" by David Allen. Short on time? Watch this 8-minute summary video here.
🏢 WeSPAC Everyone’s favourite company, WeWork, is in talks to go public through a merger with a SPAC. The expected valuation would be around $10bn, a big drop the $47bn price two years ago. The pandemic has hit them hard with both membership and revenue shrinking significantly. However, there’s a lot of hope for the business in the long run. Not sure what a ‘SPAC’ is? Click here.
📅 There’s Money in Scheduling Calendly has raised $350m at a $3bn valuation as the appointment scheduling software’s usage skyrocketed during 2020 to 10m monthly users. This is pretty incredible considering they had only raised $550k up to now, including their founder’s life savings.
📈 WallStreetBets! Shares of Gamestop, AMC Cinemas, Blackberry, and Nokia are among a number of stocks that have rocked up to 1500% in the past week as a community of 4.5m Reddit short squeezed (definition here) a number of high profile hedge funds. See Reddit co-founder give his opinion here.
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