Call Bappi

Insane raises, lurking crypto ban, and no mo creepy messages

Mar 17, 2021

Hi 👋, Tanvi here.

Filter Coffee hits your inbox every morning with notable tech and business news scoops to jump start your day.

Let’s go ahead and get started:

Market summary: 📊

Indian markets circled in place without any big moves either way. US reversed trend with tech, especially FAANMG running strong, while traditional companies were dragged down.

US:

S&P 500 - down 0.16%
Nasdaq 100 - up 0.53%

India:

Nifty 50 - down 0.13%
Sensex - down 0.062%

Quick shot of espresso ☕

✅ $10 billion is the new billion—DIY website making platform Squarespace raised $300 million on a $10 billion valuation last night like a walk in the park. The 2003 founded bootstrapped operation has had a meandering ramp to glory, and on the back of the COVID enforced digitization boom that has everyone from merchants to creators looking for simple digital presence building services, the company has been growing 50%+ rates, with $300 million+ in annual recurring revenue.

HOT STUFF 🔥

Wannabe unicorns better have Bappi Lahiri on speed dial.

CRED’s latest raise will pull $200 million of fresh dough in its pockets, doubling valuation to about $2 billion. All the old investors including DST Global, Sequoia Capital, Tiger Global, Ribbit, and General Catalyst are back for more.

FYI, barely 3 months ago had the company raised a big round at a $800 million tag, and a rapid follow on bid signal strong momentum and flawless execution—leveraging the power of exclusivity, rewards, and widespread FOMO, to gamify something as mundane as payment of bills, all combined with a genius ad campaign full of brevity unseen before with financial products.

The numbers—In under 2 years, CRED managed to filter out and segment some 6 million of the highest-quality and most potent credit users in India, about 20% of the nation’s credit card population. Follow on adjacent products will be inevitable.

Arrreyyyy… lekin revenue kidhar hai?

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What’s happening—Bytedance is entering the semiconductor business, with plans to develop its own AI chips, for which it has already started hiring engineers based in Beijing and Shanghai.

The move comes amidst Chinese government and local companies' fervent push to spend more resources on developing cutting-edge processors and cut reliance on foreign producers (aka the Americans) like Qualcomm and Nvidia.

Macro theme—the world is eyeing an overarching shift in architecture from Intel-like regular CPUs to data-friendly GPU based processors suitable for deep learning and other AI-heavy processing, made by the likes of NVIDIA, which has given these Chinese companies a good opening to invest in and push for their own products.

Anyway, Bytedance will use its custom-tailored chips for its social apps, TikTok and Douyin, while propelling China to become a key supplier of semiconductors globally apart from just being a voracious consumer.

Bottomline: this was inevitable. Bytedance’s rival, Baidu recently completed a $2 billion funding round for its standalone chip company, and others following suit make sense as more and more US sanctions are making life hard for Chinese tech giants.

“Build in public” on steroids 💰

Creator monetization platform Gumroad raised $6 million for its Series C, where a million came from investors Naval and Jason Fried, but the rest of the $5 million came from some 2,700 randos on the internet, with several having no credentials beyond being staunch early believers of the creator economy.

If you’ve heard about Gumroad, you’ve known about founder Sahil Lavingia’s somewhat distinct style of posting updates including revenues, traction, critical decisions out in the open, often attracting criticism, while other times motivating peasants like us to work harder. Jokes aside, all of that helped cultivate a social currency-reserve that eventually allowed for a record breaking raise to close in under 24 hours.

The power of audiences in its truest form.

FYI, a recent change in regulation made this possible. US SEC’s crowdfunding rules were changed effective from yesterday, revising the upper limit to $5 million from a million, making it super easy to raise big rounds from the average public. Now you only wish something like this was possible in India smh….

And if it matters, last year Gumroad made $9.2 million in revenues, with $1.08 million in profit, up 87% and 286% respectively.

Our never ending love affair with bans 🙄

Tech-innovation is on steroids, and naturally speculating whether the government would ban something or not is becoming the favorite pastime of government officials and certain factions of the media.

Latest rumour? Again a cryptocurrencies ban nationwide.

The news—Reuters suggests that “government” (all rumours) is out drafting policies for one of the strongest bans on the technology seen anywhere worldwide, including jailing users, traders, and developers for violations, which absolutely makes zero sense in a civilized society.

The other side—on the contrary, on a public forum crypto fans got to hear a much favorable tone from the finance minister, claiming that India would never push for a blanket ban, and rather the RBI will be working on creating a policy that while limits bad elements, makes it easy for innovators to push limits.

Bottomline: in summary, it’s getting ridiculous. Nobody got any clue what they’re talking about, and India’s emerging crypto and fintech ecosystem continues to lurk in the shadows, demotivated by all the uncertainty and repeated misinformation. Yay or nay, get on with it.

What else are we snackin’ 🍿

🗼 Joining the 5G race - Nokia is cutting 10,000 jobs worldwide in the coming 2 years, in verticals that don’t align with the company’s future. All the savings will be used to focus on 5G technologies, and investing in R&D.

💪 God is real - Instagram’s newest policies will no longer let adults message teens who don't follow them. Notices will appear when Instagram’s moderation systems spot suspicious behavior, and safety prompts will give teenage users the option to report or block unsolicited messengers. Bravo!

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