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Fridayaaa. It was a short week, but it lasted a bit.
We have an exciting Twitter Live Promotion on September 13, so mark it in your calendar! At 8:00 a.m. PDT / 11:00 a.m. EDT we are talking of Andrew Chano on why Gen Z VCs are garbage, and at 12pm PDT / 3pm EDT we talk to M13 partner Anna Barber about what today’s founders can learn from the bursting of the dotcom bubble.
Nice weekend! — Christine and hi
The ukbusinessupdates.com Top 3
- More layoffs: Patreon, a company that enables content creators to offer monthly payment plans to customers, confirmed it has let go of five people from its security team. Bag reports that there aren’t many details about the layoffs, but did have some information about how Patreon will manage its security going forward.
- Thank you Mr Roboto: Amazon has announced that it is acquiring Cloostermans, a mechatronics company based in Belgium. The e-commerce giant’s focus on robotics has Ingrid writing that Amazon is “taking an interesting turn in that strategy as it expands its industrial warehouse capabilities.”
- We love a startup with a nice name: Cryptocurrency is a popular market in Africa, and Tage writes about a blockchain payments startup called Bitmama, which has raised $2 million in pre-seed funding to show what it can do in new markets.
Startups and VC
For our episode of Chain Reaction this week, our trusted crypto desk discussed the latest drama surrounding crypto mega-exchange Binance, which is shaking up the stablecoin ecosystem as it appears to be pushing its way to supremacy. It’s a fantastic episode and well worth listening to.
Over the past decade, startups from Silicon Valley have migrated north to make San Francisco the nation’s most popular tech hub. The streets of the city were teeming with the working masses, writes Mary Ann. Then the COVID-19 pandemic hit and everything came to a standstill. Now, more than two years and several vaccines later, the office landscape in San Francisco has still not recovered and the city’s streets are eerily quiet.
Let’s do a few more, shall we:
- Everything on the mapRenowned founders Brian Lee and baseball Hall-of-Famer Derek Jeter have a new sports card biz, where collectors can trade and verify their cards, reports Connie.
- That’s a lot of giggly bytes: A new fiber-optic business network, Vorboss, is poised to provide up to 100 Gbps high-speed internet to London businesses, as part of a $290 million investment in the city’s infrastructure. The company is promising a minimum of 10 Gbps business fiber to the country’s capital, Paul reports.
- Papers, please, without the papers: Jobbatical – which specializes in relocating workers and whose company has seen a resurgence in post-pandemic work environments as many workers become “digital nomads” – has raised €11.6 million to make it all paperless, Mike reports.
- A fleeting glanceFlight tracking is coming to an iOS 16 lock screen near you as Flighty’s app will track flights and more, reports Sarah.
- Straight from California: The Minneapolis-based branch was founded in 2015 and Anita reports why the company founder moved to Minneapolis to build his B2B fintech startup.
Use DORA metrics to support next-generation remote working models
Image Credits: Edwin Remsberg (Opens in a new window) / Getty Images
Non-technical CEOs often rely on someone else’s assessment to find out how good their developers are. Without data, this is quite a subjective process.
Startups that don’t use DORA (DevOps research and assessment) metrics have a harder time measuring the performance of a software delivery team. For example, a group with a high failure rate can cover their shortcomings (for a while) by implementing quickly.
Remote working is the new norm, especially for engineers, said Alex Circei, CEO and co-founder of development analytics tool Waydev. Using DORA metrics, CTOs, CEOs, and HR executives can “get back on the same page to support their technical teams and business outcomes.”
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Big Tech Inc.
India gains more control over which lending apps are allowed in app stores. manish and Jagmeet keep us updated on the country’s efforts to bring greater disclosures and transparency to the digital lending world, which they say is full of “skeptical and unethical lenders.”
