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How to Think of R&D Spend

Andreessen Horowitz

In board meetings, we scrutinize the efficiency of sales and marketing (S&M) spend, costs of goods sold (COGS), and general and administrative costs (G&A). The mix of short- and long-term, offensive and defensive bets depends on your product and business priorities. Why do those priorities make sense in the current market?

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Z?m wins $150M from San Francisco schools to modernize and electrify student transport

TechCrunch

The startup’s fleet of 206 buses, vans and cars is distributed based on specific use cases, placing students who live on busier routes on school buses and sending out cars and vans for others to increase efficiency. The buses previously used were old and owned by the incumbent and have been moved out of the city.

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Extra Crunch roundup: StockX EC-1, Early Stage recaps, unpacking Alkami’s IPO, more

TechCrunch

Use discount code ECFriday to save 20% off a one- or two-year subscription. The competition intensified further last year when American incumbents Beyond Meat and Eat Just entered China. LG continued pushing envelopes — albeit to mixed effect. Setting up a management board for success with Dave Easton. Walter Thompson.

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Convoy: The Future of Truck Freight

Y Combinator

In the last few years, incumbents have started to adopt technology to fix inefficiencies, but they’ve focused on tools to streamline individual tasks (e.g., Fragmented supply and demand is a problem for incumbents, but a great opportunity for a digital marketplace. On the supply side of the US freight market, there are 1.6

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Q3 outlook forecasts cloudy days ahead for fintech M&A

TechCrunch

Looking ahead, KPMG’s view on the prospects for financial services M&A over the next six to 12 months is mixed. Wiseasy is a brand you might not have heard of, but it’s a popular Android-based payment terminal maker used in restaurants, hotels, retail outlets and schools across the Asia-Pacific region.

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Founded by Google’s former head of ads, Neeva brings its ad-free search engine to Europe

TechCrunch

market in June last year , later going on to add a free “basic” tier to the mix with certain restrictions in place. By default, Neeva uses a person’s IP address to “infer” where the user is, though based on my tests, it was several hundred miles off. France and Germany. Neeva search engine. Tripadvisor.

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After a record year for Israeli startups, 16 investors tell us what’s next

TechCrunch

Platforms that are transforming how people and businesses operate, go about their business or leverage their core assets, using superior products, data and AI. Any area that needs to compete both with incumbents and also a set of already successful “new age” companies that made the first step of meaningful disruption.

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