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Middle of the week? Rather half-weak! Alright, terrible pun, but we’re a bit low on energy in this heat wave today, so that kind of made sense.
Oh! And good news, by the way, we’re offering 15% off Disrupt tickets (excluding online or expo tickets) for you, our loyal Daily Crunch readers. Use promotional code “DC” to claim your discount!
Until tomorrow! — Christina and haje
TechCrunch’s Top 3
- Slumdog $5-illonnaire: Landa is the latest startup to attract venture capital, in this case $33 million, to democratize real estate ownership, Mary Ann writing. His approach allows people to invest in the real estate industry, which is known for providing generational wealth, but in a cheaper, more fractional way, and in some cases for as little as $5 upfront.
- Snap, crunch and . . . fizz: Despite the myriad of news and new revenue streams we’ve reported about Snap right here in this newsletter, Evan Spiegel said the words no tech employee wants to hear right now: “restructure our business “. Amanda reports that this unfortunately means a 20% reduction in staff.
- Obstacles abroad: Amazon faces stiff competition in India, and pot holder reports that presented some challenges in the e-commerce giant’s ability to gain a bigger foothold in the country.
Startups and VCs
This week, haje went deep with a founder who builds digital license plates. He thought that building an easy-to-copy hardware product in an incredibly tightly regulated winner-takes-all industry would be an absolute nightmare, but when it works, it works, and it’s fascinating to watch Reviver build a business, a license plate at the time.
Populus, the San Francisco-based transportation data startup, got its start as shared scooter mania took hold and cities tried to make sense of how infrastructure was used by fleets tiny vehicles. Now, Populus co-founder and CEO Regina Clewlow is repositioning the company to capitalize on another opportunity: curbs and congestion, Rebecca writing. It’s a very good read from transportation bureau TechCrunch with a nuance of “the power of big pivots.”
Raising Money, Cultivating Hell:
Building an XaaS customer success strategy that drives growth
Picture credits: THE PALMER (Opens in a new window) /Getty Pictures
Giving users better service than they expected could literally save a software startup. In one study, companies that dedicated 10% of annual revenue to customer success achieved peak net recurring revenue.
“Companies primarily deploy two or more customer success archetypes,” according to TC+ contributors Rachel Parrinello and John Stamos. “They typically vary based on customer segment, sales vs. technical focus, and sales movement direction: adopt, renew, up-sell, and cross-sell.”
If you’re interested in optimizing revenue through CS, read the rest for a full overview of the task design methodology, because “companies shouldn’t design their customer success roles in a vacuum.”
(TechCrunch+ is our membership program, which helps founders and startup teams grow. You can register here.)
Big Tech inc.
Social media and privacy don’t often go hand in hand, especially when kids can already see a lot on the internet. Twitter got caught up in this when it allegedly tried to monetize adult content in a bid to compete with OnlyFans. He later dropped out of the program when it was found that its system could not “detect child sexual abuse material and non-consensual nudity on a large scale”. Amanda writing. Meanwhile, California lawmakers wasted no time putting in place statewide online privacy protections for children where there are none at the federal level, taylor reports.
- Hit the accelerator, uh, EV pedal: Toyota is accelerating its investments in American electric vehicles and will invest some $3.8 billion in this initiative, up from $1.3 billion initially, Jaclyn writing.
- Leveraging NFTs: Event organizers working with Ticketmaster can now issue NFTs linked to tickets on Flow, Ivan reports.
- It’s Almost Fall And That Means Another Apple Event: brian has the skinny on all the things you need to know about Apple’s iPhone 14 event on September 7.
- New satellite on the block: Royal Caribbean opts for the “all-in on satellite service” and will equip its fleet of ships with Internet Starlink, writes Devin.
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