The Founder Resolve
A VC: Musings of a VC in NYC
MAY 11, 2022
Facebook went on a year-long effort to become a “mobile-first” company and also acquired Instagram that year. This all happened in Facebook’s first year as a public company.
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Can gaming resurrect the NFT market? OpenSea thinks so
TechCrunch
NOVEMBER 17, 2022
Today at TechCrunch’s crypto-focused event in Miami , OpenSea CEO Devin Finzer discussed his business and the future market for non-fungible tokens. This made Finzer’s appearance at the event potentially clarifying — in the midst of a downturn, where does OpenSea see the future for its core product category?
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The latest list of YC-backed companies worth over $150M is the most geographically diverse yet
TechCrunch
FEBRUARY 28, 2022
In 2018, Y Combinator released its first mega list of the top companies valued at $150 million or more that have gone through the accelerator. Over the past four years, it’s updated the list to reflect the current status of its most valued companies. What this means is that more companies, particularly outside the U.S.,
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2022 YC Year in Review
Y Combinator
DECEMBER 20, 2022
Every company was offered our now standard deal of $500k. As of today, there are 16 public YC companies , Presto and Rigetti Computing joined the club this year. Our top companies list grew by over 150 companies in 2022. Even after the pullback in public markets, the total value of YC companies is over $600B.
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TechCrunch+ roundup: Overinflated valuations, equity crowdfunding, SCOTUS v. climate tech
TechCrunch
JULY 5, 2022
My work in early-stage startups focused on operations, so I used Wikipedia to find the formula for calculating a company’s post-money valuation: PMV = N x P. N = number of shares the company has post-investment. In January, NFT auction marketplace OpenSea closed a $300 million Series C that valued the company at $13.3
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Bitcoin is religion; web3 is greed
TechCrunch
DECEMBER 21, 2021
Jack Dorsey , former Twitter CEO and present CEO of Block, the company formerly known as Square , stirred the crypto pot recently, making explicit his preferences in the larger blockchain landscape by taking swipes at decentralized internet projects that don’t fall under Bitcoin’s aegis. The complaint is pretty true.
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Syndicate raises ‘informal’ round from over 50 partners to bring DAOs to the masses
TechCrunch
MAY 3, 2022
Since the product launched three months ago, more than 1,100 investment clubs have been created on Syndicate’s platform, the company says. The raise includes strategic investors such as Carta, Circle Ventures, OpenSea and Uniswap Labs’ new venture arm , as well as institutional funds-of-funds, nonprofits and web3 talent networks.
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Announcing the agenda for TechCrunch Sessions: Crypto 2022
TechCrunch
SEPTEMBER 20, 2022
Zhao will give us a rare peek behind the curtain at Binance, sharing his insights on what it takes to run the company in a choppy market and his biggest hopes, fears and predictions about its future. But which crypto companies, protocols and projects will be compliant within the current regulatory framework? A Non-Fungible Empire.
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Daily Crunch: Buick unveils Wildcat concept car as company shifts to EV-only lineup
TechCrunch
JUNE 1, 2022
First up is Buick, which is full of surprises today — not only did the company say it is transitioning to electric vehicles only, but after a few years of focusing on SUVs, Buick is going back to its coupe and sedan roots. Romain reports the company sells secondhand refurbished electric bikes. The TechCrunch Top 3.
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Power up with our partners at TC Sessions: Crypto
TechCrunch
NOVEMBER 9, 2022
You’ll hear from the likes of Binance founder and CEO, Changpeng (CZ) Zhao; OpenSea co-founder and CEO, Devin Finzer; Sequoia Capital partner, Michelle Bailhe Fradin; and many other movers and shakers. Is your company interested in sponsoring or exhibiting at TC Sessions: Crypto? I mean, just look at this power-packed agenda.
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Announcing the agenda for TechCrunch Sessions: Crypto 2022
TechCrunch
SEPTEMBER 22, 2022
Zhao will give us a rare peek behind the curtain at Binance, sharing his insights on what it takes to run the company in a choppy market and his biggest hopes, fears and predictions about its future. But which crypto companies, protocols and projects will be compliant within the current regulatory framework? A Non-Fungible Empire.
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Announcing the agenda for TechCrunch Sessions: Crypto 2022
TechCrunch
SEPTEMBER 28, 2022
Zhao will give us a rare peek behind the curtain at Binance, sharing his insights on what it takes to run the company in a choppy market and his biggest hopes, fears and predictions about its future. But which crypto companies, protocols and projects will be compliant within the current regulatory framework? A Non-Fungible Empire.
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$10B crypto developer platform Alchemy buys coding bootcamp in first-ever acquisition
TechCrunch
AUGUST 25, 2022
The company purchased education startup ChainShot , which runs coding bootcamps for aspiring web3 developers, Alchemy cofounder and CEO Nikil Viswanathan told TechCrunch exclusively. The company says it powers over $150 billion in transactions annually for clients including NFT platform OpenSea and DeFi app Quantstamp.
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Republic’s metaverse real estate arm spins off, rebrands as Everyrealm
TechCrunch
FEBRUARY 10, 2022
Traditional real estate companies are amongst the many investors flocking to stake their claim on plots of land in virtual worlds like Decentraland and Sandbox. Now, Yorio is spinning Republic Realm off into its own private company called Everyrealm, though Republic will remain a minority investor, Yorio told TechCrunch in an interview.
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Y Combinator announces Launch YC, a way for its portfolio to shout to the public
TechCrunch
JUNE 29, 2022
The famed accelerator, which has seeded the likes of Instacart, Coinbase, OpenSea and Dropbox, invites users to vote for newly launched startups “to help them climb up the leaderboard, try out product demos, and learn about the founding team.”. 1,000 companies per Y Combinator batch? RIP Y Combinator.
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Creator Royalties
A VC: Musings of a VC in NYC
NOVEMBER 6, 2022
Yesterday, OpenSea, the largest established NFT marketplace, partially addressed this issue by announcing a “tool for on-chain enforcement of royalties for new collections. It is not clear to me whether this tool will only work on OpenSea or if it will work across all NFT marketplaces.
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Five spectacular reasons to go to TC Sessions: Crypto
TechCrunch
NOVEMBER 8, 2022
OpenSea co-founder and CEO, Devin Finzer. Tech companies may need to consider balancing the ethos of the blockchain industry with protecting their revenue models and reducing regulatory risk. Is your company interested in sponsoring or exhibiting at TC Sessions: Crypto? Binance founder and CEO, Changpeng (CZ) Zhao.
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Superplastic raises $20M to expand its cartoon influencer universe
TechCrunch
OCTOBER 20, 2021
A company from the creator of Ello and Kidrobot is announcing a new $20 million funding round to build out an imagined virtual world populated with deranged-yet-cute cartoon influencers. The $20 million Series A round brings the company’s total capital raised to $38 million. Superplastic’s proposition is a strange one.
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Zombie startups
TechCrunch
OCTOBER 15, 2022
People leave jobs for all kinds of reasons, but when it’s a CFO departing a richly valued company as the company itself conducts layoffs, the exodus can be a sign of a larger issue. He also introduced me to the idea of zombie companies, which I appreciated as it is officially spooky season and we love a festive framework.
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Blockchain infra startup Tenderly raises $40M after seeing 500% YoY revenue growth
TechCrunch
MARCH 2, 2022
That company aims to be the starting place for developers considering building a product on top of a blockchain or mainstream blockchain applications. . In fact, the company says that it works with the majority of the top 100 ethereum projects. “Now It is says that it is more focused on smart contracts.
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3 views: What does ‘Line Go Up’ tell us about the state of the NFT art market?
TechCrunch
FEBRUARY 2, 2022
Publicly traded companies like Nike and Visa are spending millions to get in early on these unregulated, highly speculative investments. ” NFT auction marketplace OpenSea, home of the Bored Ape Yacht Club, closed a $300 million Series C last month that valued the company at $13.3 Also worth noting: most U.S.
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OpenSea’s $13B valuation doesn’t make sense as NFT trading volumes plunge
TechCrunch
JULY 1, 2022
It may feel like it’s been a few years since OpenSea announced the funding round that pushed its valuation to the $13 billion mark. At the time, this column dug into the company’s financial performance and came to a number of conclusions, primarily that the company was generating a lot of revenue. It was January.
TechCrunch+ roundup: 2022 VC predictions, how to hook an angel, product advisory councils
TechCrunch
JANUARY 21, 2022
I have also held jobs at companies where we engaged directly with current and past customers to ask them what they wanted. billion deal, uniting two of the biggest forces in video games to create the worlds third-biggest gaming company. Dear Sophie: How do I successfully expand my company to the US? Microsoft Corp.
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Alchemy raises $80M at a $505M valuation to be the ‘AWS for blockchain’
TechCrunch
APRIL 28, 2021
The company previously raised a total of $15.5 First, the company, which describes itself as the backend technology behind the blockchain industry, went from public launch to a $505 million valuation in a matter of just eight months. million, so the latest financing brings its total raised to $95.5 million since it launched in 2017.
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NFT market OpenSea hits $1.5 billion valuation
TechCrunch
JULY 20, 2021
It’s been a wild 2021 for NFT auction marketplace OpenSea. The startup announced in March it had closed a $23 million Series A, and now some four months later, the company tells TechCrunch it has raised another $100 million in a Series B round led by Andreessen Horowitz at a $1.5 billion valuation. billion valuation.
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Haun Ventures leads $50M round in NFT startup Zora Labs
TechCrunch
MAY 5, 2022
The NFT ecosystem continues to chug along, but the vast majority of volume is still moving through the centralized halls of NFT marketplace OpenSea, leaving crypto VCs eager to find new channels. The $50 million funding round values the company at $600 million. Following a16z departure, Katie Haun debuts Haun Ventures with $1.5B
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TechCrunch+ roundup: 5 pitch deck slides to fix, initial viable product, MLOps acceleration
TechCrunch
NOVEMBER 19, 2021
Remember, a pitch deck needs to achieve two things: tell your company story and convince the investor that they can make money with this,” says Cayasso. This evolution has played a key role in helping companies adopt and employ ML and AI, according to Ashish Kakran, principal at Thomvest Ventures. Walter Thompson.
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Daily Crunch: After developers complain, Microsoft clarifies new policy on open source monetization
TechCrunch
JULY 15, 2022
Words mean everything : Microsoft came under fire recently by developers due to the way it worded a new policy banning profiting off of open source software, and while the company clawed back that policy, Paul provides a look at what all this will mean. Startups and VC. It has raised $50 million in equity at a $1.2
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‘AWS for blockchain’ Alchemy boosts valuation to $3.5B with $250M raise
TechCrunch
OCTOBER 28, 2021
Exactly six months after raising $80 million at a $505 million valuation, blockchain and Web3 development SaaS startup Alchemy has raised $250 million in a Series C funding round that values the company at $3.5 According to CEO and co-founder Nikil Viswanathan, the company is in fact “very profitable.” Image Credits: Alchemy.
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Are we entering an NFT downturn?
TechCrunch
MARCH 10, 2022
The startup point is what we care the most about, of course, and there are more players in the space than merely OpenSea. So let’s comb data from the Dune platform – more on that company and its recent fundraise below – and other sources to get a handle on NFT activity. What does the data say?
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Daily Crunch: Startup that transforms real-world items into NFTs raises $6.9M seed round
TechCrunch
MAY 3, 2022
We’ll see if this vision shakes out, but with backers like Alexis Ohanian’s venture firm, Seven Seven Six; NFT marketplace OpenSea; and rapper Future, it’s probably a good bet that it will. Toplyne just raised $15 million to help product-forward companies analyze their customers and figure out the best go-to-market strategies.
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Co-founder titles aren’t a formality, they’re a morality
TechCrunch
NOVEMBER 19, 2021
And it was good to have her back, as we had a small mountain of news to talk through: OpenSea could be worth $10 billion : Right before we recorded, news broke that OpenSea could raise new capital at a far-greater valuation than it did earlier this year. Then, Allred admitted that it’s been difficult to make his company’s vision work.
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Are CFOs OK? (Answer: Yes, but CEOs? That’s complicated)
TechCrunch
OCTOBER 15, 2022
This week, OpenSea CFO Brian Roberts left the web3 company less than a year after taking the job. Days later, Brex CFO Adam Swiecicki left the expense management company to join Rippling, another company that recently expanded into the expense management space. But that’s not all.
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Can you build centralized islands in a decentralized ocean?
TechCrunch
JANUARY 7, 2022
Today, however, despite a smaller team, we had just as much as always to chew through: OpenSea’s epic new fundraise: Alex did a little Fun Math on the company’s trading volume and possible revenue totals. The gist is that OpenSea is a big business.
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5 investors explain why Latin America is poised to weather the crypto winter
TechCrunch
JULY 13, 2022
As a consumer market, is Latin America currently being served more by homegrown or foreign companies? . My last company, Experimental, was one of the first to launch a blockchain game on Ethereum, back in 2017. We spent a lot of time with the founders of Axie, OpenSea, and all the OGs of the crypto gaming space.
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What will it take to reignite the NFT market?
TechCrunch
AUGUST 1, 2022
For companies in the NFT space, the news is likely unwelcome. To start, we’ll check in on the market-leading OpenSea, and then we’ll add in other NFT marketplaces to get a good vibe for the non-fungible token market. Trading continues, but at what appears to be a far slower pace.
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Four-month-old Doppel is helping some of the biggest NFT projects spot scams
TechCrunch
MAY 24, 2022
Polygon Studios, Solana Ventures, OpenSea Ventures, Dapper Labs, SVAngel, South Park Commons, Script Capital, Spartan Group, Paxos, 6529 Capital, Quiet Capital, and AlphaLab Capital all participated in the round alongside angel investors including Balaji Srinivasan and Gokul Rajaram, the company said.
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Crypto exchange Kraken cuts 1,100 jobs
TechCrunch
NOVEMBER 30, 2022
The announcement came from a company blog post and follows similar news from DoorDash that it was also cutting staff. Prior to the Kraken news, we’ve seen several high-profile implosions in and amongst web3 companies , and layoffs from other exchanges including the American crypto giant Coinbase earlier in the year.
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Bitcoin slips under the $40,000 mark
TechCrunch
JANUARY 10, 2022
Crypto-focused publication The Block noted this morning that NFT trading volumes at the popular OpenSea marketplace are strong to start the year. Companies like Coinbase and others make their daily bread off trading fees, meaning that falling crypto prices are generally bearish for their financial performance.
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Y Combinator Top Companies - February 2022
Y Combinator
FEBRUARY 28, 2022
We’re excited to share the 2022 YC Top Companies. In addition to the list of top companies, we also launched the YC Breakthrough Companies list to highlight the fast-growing companies that have received between $15M-$300M from YC. 99 new companies joined the list since our last update in July 2021.
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Meet the startups competing at TC Sessions: Crypto
TechCrunch
NOVEMBER 16, 2022
Devin Finzer , co-founder and CEO, OpenSea. Is your company interested in sponsoring or exhibiting at TC Sessions: Crypto? Just for starters, you’ll hear from: Brian Armstrong , co-founder and CEO, Coinbase. Changpeng (CZ) Zhao , founder and CEO, Binance. Buy your pass today , and we’ll see you in Miami.
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Uniswap Labs COO says mainstream crypto adoption hinges on accessibility and ease
TechCrunch
APRIL 15, 2022
Throughout the web3 world, companies, protocols, and projects alike are pushing to onboard a billion users, what they see as the tipping point for cryptocurrency use to grow exponentially. Uniswap Labs , a company building upon the decentralized protocol Uniswap, aims to do just that. Uniswap Labs COO Mary-Catherine Lader.
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Success with Rihanna’s music rights helps Web3 marketplace raise fresh VC round
TechCrunch
MAY 16, 2023
That’s good news for web3 music company AnotherBlock , based out of Sweden. That said, the listing of the song wasn’t all plain-sailing, with OpenSea delisting the BBHMM NFT collection for unknown reasons. But, clearly, blockchain is like a Zombie that refuses to lie down. Founded by Michel D.
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Startups race to build a crypto-native, consumer-friendly messaging platform for web3
TechCrunch
JULY 14, 2022
” Amid a growing pile of bankruptcies , one of the buzziest startups in the business, the NFT marketplace OpenSea, announced a major layoff just today. And how many people use it will determine if the startup is able to strike partnerships with platforms like OpenSea that it needs on its side.
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