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Midweek? More like mid-weak! Okay, terrible pun, but we’re a little low on energy in this heat wave today, so it kind of made sense.
Oh! And good news, by the way, we’re offering a 15% discount on Disrupt tickets (exclusively online or expo tickets) for you, our loyal Daily Crunch readers. Use promo code “DC” to claim your discount!
See you tomorrow! — Christine and hi
The ukbusinessupdates.com Top 3
- Slumdog $5-illonnaire: Landa is the latest startup to raise venture capital, in this case $33 million, to democratize real estate ownership, Mary Ann writes. His approach allows people to invest in the real estate industry, which is known for providing generational wealth, but in a less expensive, more fractional way, and in some cases for as little as $5 initially.
- Popping, crackling and . . . fizzle: Despite the myriad of news and new revenue streams we’ve reported on Snap here in this newsletter, Evan Spiegel said the words no tech employee wants to hear right now:restructuring our company.” Amanda reports that unfortunately this means that 20% of the staff will have to be cut.
- Obstacles abroad: Amazon faces tough competition in India, and manish reports that have revealed a number of challenges in the e-commerce giant’s ability to gain a more prominent position in the country.
Startups and VC
This week, hi went deep with a founder who builds digital license plates. He mused that building an easy-to-copy hardware product in an incredibly tightly regulated industry where the winner takes everything would be an outright nightmare, but when it works, it works, and it’s fascinating to watch Reviver build a company, one license plate at the time.
Populus, the San Francisco-based transportation data startup, got its start when the mania of shared scooters took hold and cities tried to understand how infrastructure was used by fleets of small vehicles. Now Populus co-founder and CEO Regina Clewlow is repositioning the company to take advantage of another big opportunity: curbs and congestion, Rebecca writes. It’s a really good read from the ukbusinessupdates.com transport desk with an undertone of “the power of great pivots”.
Raising Money, Fixing Hell:
Develop an XaaS customer success strategy that drives growth
Image Credits: THEPALMER (Opens in a new window) / Getty Images
Providing users with a better service than they expected could literally save software startup. In one study, companies that spent 10% of annual revenue on customer success achieved maximum net recurring revenue.
“Companies typically use two or more archetypes for customer success,” said TC+ employees Rachel Parrinello and John Stamos. “They usually differ by customer segment, business versus technical focus, and sales move focus: adopt, renew, upsell, 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.”
(ukbusinessupdates.com+ is our membership program that helps founders and startup teams move forward. You can register here.)
Big Tech Inc.
Social media and privacy don’t often go hand in hand, especially when children can already see a lot on the internet. Twitter got caught up in this when it was reportedly trying to monetize adult content in an effort to compete with OnlyFans. It later scrapped the program when it was found that the system was unable to detect “material of child sexual abuse and non-consensual nudity on a large scale”. Amanda writes. Meanwhile, California lawmakers wasted no time in proceeding to introduce statewide online privacy protections for children where there is none at the federal level. Taylor reports.
- Step on the gas, uh, EV pedalToyota is accelerating its investment in electric vehicles in the US and will put about $3.8 billion into that initiative, up from an initial $1.3 billion, Jaclyn writes.
- Redeeming on NFTs: Event organizers working with Ticketmaster can now issue NFTs associated with 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 nearby: Royal Caribbean is going “all-in on satellite service” and will equip its fleet of ships with Starlink internet, Devin writes.
