Daily Crunch: Citing slow growth and desire to be ‘at the forefront of the AI era,’ Dropbox CEO lays off 500
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Thursday is here, how the hell did that happen? Those days, they just keep coming. If you’re still unsure if you want to join Disrupt, we’ve got you covered—there’s a Disrupt Pass for every role and budget.
It also looks like Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes isn’t going to jail today after all. She was scheduled to start her 11-year sentence, but then things happened. Conny has the full story.
TechCrunch Top 3
- more layoffs: Dropbox CEO Drew Houston broke the news today that the company will lay off 500 employees, or 16% of its staff. ingrid reports that Houston said the cuts are due to slowing growth and “the age of AI.”
- Prepare the popcorn: Warner Bros. partners with Viacom18 to bring “Succession” and other HBO content to India. manish has more.
- Legacy learns to embrace AI: jag reunion delves into how legacy financial software giant Intuit decided to lay out the welcome mat for artificial intelligence instead of closing the door and turning the bolt.
Startups and VCs
Posh is a ticketing and event management platform for all users to organize events big or small, regardless if you are an event planner, promoter or just want to charge your friends a cover for drinking all the expensive alcohol in His birthday party. lauren reports that Posh announced its public launch today after being in beta since October 2020. Along with the launch, the company also announced its seed round of $5 million.
The concept of SaaS as a business model changed the game in technology by moving users away from buying software outright to paying for service availability based on time-based subscriptions, typically priced monthly or yearly. ingrid reports. Today, a London startup called M3ter that is building tools to take the next step in that evolution – more granular usage-based pricing – is announcing funding thanks to strong demand. The company has raised $14 million.
Further? Alright, alright, here’s another handful for you:
Capital efficiency is the new VC filter for startups
Image Credits: PM images (Opens in a new window) / Fake Images
For some SaaS B2B startups, focusing solely on the LTV:CAC ratio is a great way to hide weak metrics from customers. Dividing customer lifetime value by customer acquisition cost can provide useful information, but only if you have accurate retention data, and lots of it.
“Today, investors are focusing on other efficiency metrics that present a more reliable and complete picture of startup capital efficiency, and so should you,” says Igor Shaverskyi, a partner at the venture capital firm. Waveup.
In this TC+ column, he offers a formula and benchmarks for calculating CAC payback, revealing to founders (and potential investors) “how long it will take them to pay off customer acquisition costs.”
Three more from the TC+ team:
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big tech inc
Let’s talk about Meta today, shall we? Yesterday, the company reported that its earnings beat revenue expectations, as covered by amanda. But that’s not all: our colleagues caught a few tidbits, including that the company said 10% of its global ad revenue was at risk from the ordering of data flows from the European Union. Natasha L. has more on that. Additionally, time spent on Instagram grew 24%, thanks to TikTok-style AI Reel recommendations and reporting. darrell.
Meanwhile, Meta also scored a victory in the courts, with an appeals court ruling in favor of the tech giant regarding an antitrust case brought by state attorneys general. Sarah writes that “the States alleged that Meta had illegally maintained monopoly power in the social media market through its acquisitions of the photo-sharing app Instagram in 2012 and WhatsApp in 2014, and that it gained further power through policies of data that hurt app developers.”
Now here are five more for you:
