🧪$100m Startup Scam
Prince Harry joins a startup, the WeWork movie trailer drops & a $500k digital house
So, what happened this week in the Tech & Startup world? 🌍 Microsoft discusses buying Discord, Freetrade raises Series B and a new crypto social media company causes some trouble…
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The Grapevine Newsflash 🔥
12 tech & startup stories in 169 super duper short seconds.
🎤 What’s Clubhouse? Wired has written a really cool piece on the rise of Clubhouse, how it got so popular and some of the challenges it’ll face as they scale. Have a read here. If you’re on the app, don’t forget to join our new Club by searching ‘The Grapevine Live’ or clicking here.
🚀 Freetrade Raises Series B! The oversubscribed round is expected to be worth in excess of £50m and is led by Left Lane capital and L Catterton. Read more here.
🏦 Banking on It Revolut has applied to become a fully regulated bank in the US. This signals a strong intention to tackle the US, a market where many non-native companies (like Monzo) have struggled within.
🚗 Arrivals IPO! Arrival, a British startup that creates zero-emission public transport vehicles, has IPO’d for $13bn. The catch? Arrival hasn’t brought any vehicles to market yet. Despite this, it’s already signed a deal to supply 10k vehicles to the United Parcel Service and will begin trialing electric buses on UK roads this year. Read more here.
🤑 Finfluencers & FinTok What does Gamestop, Dogecoin & Ripple have in common (apart from likely being pump and dump schemes)? They’ve been driven by a new type of influencer. Have they helped stir up interest in investing… or is it a disaster waiting to happen? See more here.
#️⃣ What’s Your Reputation Worth? Last week, we covered actor Terry Crews’ new currency ‘$POWER’. This week, a new startup launched that allows anyone to buy and sell coins based on popular creators. ‘Bitclout’ is backed by top funds like A16z & Sequoia but has already been wrapped up in controversy… read about it here.
📷 The WeWork Movie? WeWork went from a $47bn valuation to being close to bankruptcy in just six weeks. Hulu has created a documentary on the rise and fall of We Work as well as its founder, Adam Neumann. You can checkout the trailer here.
👑 Hiring Royalty! Prince Harry has joined BetterUp as Chief Impact Officer. BetterUp is a silicon valley based coaching app that gives users to a network of 2,000 coaches. Hear BetterUp’s CEO speak about what made him bring on Prince Harry here.
🎮 Microsoft + Discord? Microsoft could acquire Discord for $10bn. Discord boasts 140m monthly users and annual revenues of $130m, for it’s freemium chat software that’s mainly used by the gaming community. Discord monetises its product by charging users monthly fees for premium features like HD video sharing and custom emojis. Read more about the talks here.
🏠 NFT House The most recent NFT development is that a fully digital home has been sold for just over $500,000. The buyer got a video of the house as well as a set of 3D files they can upload to their ‘metaverse’ where they can store the house and interact with it through a digital avatar (i.e. AR or VR). This comes as an NFT of the first Tweet ever sold for $2.9m.
🍔 “Griddle Parity” Plant-based meat substitutes make up 1% of the total meat market. Price has been a key inhibitor of growth, with a chicken breast costing $300,000 to make in 2013. However, today this same chicken breast costs $7.50. Those in the know estimate that plant-based companies will be able to get to ‘griddle parity’ in the next 2-3 years. Read all about it here.
🧪 Theranos 2.0? The founders of uBiome, a startup that analyzed fecal samples to sequence the human microbiome, have been charged by the SEC with defrauding investors. They had raised over $100m for the company and now face a total of 97 years in jail. Get ready for the Netflix special…
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Over & Out,
Nick & Louis