Startups

Daily Crunch: Oracle dives deeply into healthcare after closing $28B Cerner acquisition

Comment

Oracle CEO Larry Ellison onstage at Oracle Open world
Image Credits: Kim Kulish/Corbis / Getty Images

To get a roundup of TechCrunch’s biggest and most important stories delivered to your inbox every day at 3 p.m. PDT, subscribe here.

Hi there, and welcome to another Daily Crunch, this time for Tuesday June 7, 2022. The past 24 hours have had a lot of Apple news in them, and we’ve got comprehensive coverage on that front — but we also have a veritable cornucopia of other news from across the startup-o-sphere, so let’s get right into it! — Haje and Christine

The TechCrunch Top 3

  • Oracle’s done deal: Oracle quietly wrapped up its acquisition of Cerner, which goes into effect Wednesday. Electronic health records is big business, and while this merger gives Oracle a major seat at the table, it is not yet known how these companies will mesh or whether Cerner will be lucrative for Oracle. Whatever happens, can this be a step closer to enabling medical records to be more easily accessible and transferrable for patients?
  • One thing to rule them all, one thing to find them, one thing in the darkness to charge them: As fans of climate and the environment, and as people with an infinite number of chargers in drawers, we’re all for EU’s new rules that dictate that most devices need to be able to use the USB-C charging standard. We’re curious how this will affect startups in particular; different chargers and giving users the option not to receive a charger with their device is going to make supply chains and SKUs a lot more complex.
  • Grab the Wite-Out: Alex and Anna look at venture capital activity in Latin America and sense that a decline is in the cards for the second quarter, alluding to a possible correction.

Startups and VC

Best known for its open source microcontrollers that have been wildly embraced by the developer community, Arduino now has its sights firmly set on the enterprise world, Brian reports. Specifically, the company believes it’s well positioned to gain a foothold among Gen Z and millennial engineers in the workforce.

Let’s check out what else there is:

The guide to great metrics: Product-led principles

Woman holding acorn in front of oak tree. product led growth principles
Image Credits: John Lund (opens in a new window) / Getty Images

Imagine a world where founders boasted about how much growth they’ve driven, as opposed to their fundraising prowess.

The ability to raise capital is less impressive than finding sustainable ways to build a growing base of paying customers. The right coaching and a strong network can help many founders land a sizable seed round, but that money reflects investor confidence, not market demand.

In a post for TC+, Curtis Townshend, senior director of growth at OpenView, shares 11 product-led growth tactics that foster “customer acquisition, retention and expansion.”

After surveying 14 public B2B software companies, Townshend says firms that built for discoverability and deployed usage-based pricing had a median growth rate of 141%, compared to 21% for traditional SaaS.

These companies were also much more efficient with regard to the Rule of 40 and retaining revenue. “Across the board, the variance in metrics is stark,” says Townshend.

The guide to great metrics: Product-led principles

(TechCrunch+ is our membership program, which helps founders and startup teams get ahead. You can sign up here.)

Big Tech Inc.

With WWDC in full swing, let’s take a bite out of some Apple news first, shall we? Some interesting new security features for macOS 13 Ventura (or as we dubbed it “Mace Ventura”) are coming down the pipeline here; for example, when you plug a device into the USB-C port, it will automatically be blocked until you give it the green light. Apple is also fixing an annoying “tapback” problem when an iPhone user dares to text with an Android user. Some developers are probably rejoicing, too, as some restrictions are being loosened on what can be published on the App Store. Meanwhile, iOS 16 brings with it some redesigned and reimagined features, like better photo-sharing abilities and editing tools.

Next, we reported on a little shake-up happening over at Peloton, which tapped Amazon Web Services executive Liz Coddington as its new chief financial officer, effective next week. She takes over for Jill Woodworth, Peloton’s first CFO, who is leaving the company. As you might recall, earnings were not so good, which has the company “pedaling” to manage its supply-and-demand issues.

In money news, PayPal took a hint from its crypto-enthused users and unveiled a way for them to move their cryptocurrency from PayPal to other users, wallets or exchanges.

Here is some more news to gobble up:

More TechCrunch

You’re running out of time to join the Startup Battlefield 200, our curated showcase of top startups from around the world and across multiple industries. This elite cohort — 200…

Startup Battlefield 200 applications close tomorrow

New York’s state legislature has passed a bill that would prohibit social media companies from showing so-called “addictive feeds” to children under 18, unless they obtain parental consent. The Stop…

New York moves to limit kids’ access to ‘addictive feeds’

Dogs are the most popular pet in the U.S.: 65.1 million households have one, according to the American Pet Products Association. But while cats are not far off, with 46.5…

Cat-sitting startup Meowtel clawed its way to profitability despite trouble raising from dog-focused VCs

Anterior, a company that uses AI to expedite health insurance approval for medical procedures, has raised a $20 million Series A round at a $95 million post-money valuation led by…

Anterior grabs $20M from NEA to expedite health insurance approvals with AI

Welcome back to TechCrunch’s Week in Review — TechCrunch’s newsletter recapping the week’s biggest news. Want it in your inbox every Saturday? Sign up here. There’s more bad news for…

How India’s most valuable startup ended up being worth nothing

If death and taxes are inevitable, why are companies so prepared for taxes, but not for death? “I lost both of my parents in college, and it didn’t initially spark…

Bereave wants employers to suck a little less at navigating death

Google and Microsoft have made their developer conferences a showcase of their generative AI chops, and now all eyes are on next week’s Worldwide Developers Conference, which is expected to…

Apple needs to focus on making AI useful, not flashy

AI systems and large language models need to be trained on massive amounts of data to be accurate but they shouldn’t train on data that they don’t have the rights…

Deal Dive: Human Native AI is building the marketplace for AI training licensing deals

Before Wazer came along, “water jet cutting” and “affordable” didn’t belong in the same sentence. That changed in 2016, when the company launched the world’s first desktop water jet cutter,…

Wazer Pro is making desktop water jetting more affordable

Former Autonomy chief executive Mike Lynch issued a statement Thursday following his acquittal of criminal charges, ending a 13-year legal battle with Hewlett-Packard that became one of Silicon Valley’s biggest…

Autonomy’s Mike Lynch acquitted after US fraud trial brought by HP

Featured Article

What Snowflake isn’t saying about its customer data breaches

As another Snowflake customer confirms a data breach, the cloud data company says its position “remains unchanged.”

2 days ago
What Snowflake isn’t saying about its customer data breaches

Investor demand has been so strong for Rippling’s shares that it is letting former employees particpate in its tender offer. With one exception.

Rippling bans former employees who work at competitors like Deel and Workday from its tender offer stock sale

It turns out the space industry has a lot of ideas on how to improve NASA’s $11 billion, 15-year plan to collect and return samples from Mars. Seven of these…

NASA puts $10M down on Mars sample return proposals from Blue Origin, SpaceX and others

Featured Article

In 2024, many Y Combinator startups only want tiny seed rounds — but there’s a catch

When Bowery Capital general partner Loren Straub started talking to a startup from the latest Y Combinator accelerator batch a few months ago, she thought it was strange that the company didn’t have a lead investor for the round it was raising. Even stranger, the founders didn’t seem to be…

2 days ago
In 2024, many Y Combinator startups only want tiny seed rounds — but there’s a catch

The keynote will be focused on Apple’s software offerings and the developers that power them, including the latest versions of iOS, iPadOS, macOS, tvOS, visionOS and watchOS.

Watch Apple kick off WWDC 2024 right here

Welcome to Startups Weekly — Haje’s weekly recap of everything you can’t miss from the world of startups. Anna will be covering for him this week. Sign up here to…

Startups Weekly: Ups, downs, and silver linings

HSBC and BlackRock estimate that the Indian edtech giant Byju’s, once valued at $22 billion, is now worth nothing.

BlackRock has slashed the value of stake in Byju’s, once worth $22 billion, to zero

Apple is set to board the runaway locomotive that is generative AI at next week’s World Wide Developer Conference. Reports thus far have pointed to a partnership with OpenAI that…

Apple’s generative AI offering might not work with the standard iPhone 15

LinkedIn has confirmed it will no longer allow advertisers to target users based on data gleaned from their participation in LinkedIn Groups. The move comes more than three months after…

LinkedIn to limit targeted ads in EU after complaint over sensitive data use

Founders: Need plans this weekend? What better way to spend your time than applying to this year’s Startup Battlefield 200 at TechCrunch Disrupt. With Monday’s deadline looming, this is a…

Startup Battlefield 200 applications due Monday

The company is in the process of building a gigawatt-scale factory in Kentucky to produce its nickel-hydrogen batteries.

Novel battery manufacturer EnerVenue is raising $515M, per filing

Meta is quietly rolling out a new “Communities” feature on Messenger, the company confirmed to TechCrunch. The feature is designed to help organizations, schools and other private groups communicate in…

Meta quietly rolls out Communities on Messenger

Featured Article

Siri and Google Assistant look to generative AI for a new lease on life

Voice assistants in general are having an existential moment, and generative AI is poised to be the logical successor.

2 days ago
Siri and Google Assistant look to generative AI for a new lease on life

Education software provider PowerSchool is being taken private by investment firm Bain Capital in a $5.6 billion deal.

Bain to take K-12 education software provider PowerSchool private in $5.6B deal

Shopify has acquired Threads.com, the Sequoia-backed Slack alternative, Threads said on its website. The companies didn’t disclose the terms of the deal but said that the Threads.com team will join…

Shopify acquires Threads (no, not that one)

Featured Article

Bangladeshi police agents accused of selling citizens’ personal information on Telegram

Two senior police officials in Bangladesh are accused of collecting and selling citizens’ personal information to criminals on Telegram.

3 days ago
Bangladeshi police agents accused of selling citizens’ personal information on Telegram

Carta, a once-high-flying Silicon Valley startup that loudly backed away from one of its businesses earlier this year, is working on a secondary sale that would value the company at…

Carta’s valuation to be cut by $6.5 billion in upcoming secondary sale

Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft has successfully delivered two astronauts to the International Space Station, a key milestone in the aerospace giant’s quest to certify the capsule for regular crewed missions.  Starliner…

Boeing’s Starliner overcomes leaks and engine trouble to dock with ‘the big city in the sky’

Rivian needs to sell its new revamped vehicles at a profit in order to sustain itself long enough to get to the cheaper mass market R2 SUV on the road.

Rivian’s path to survival is now remarkably clear

Featured Article

What to expect from WWDC 2024: iOS 18, macOS 15 and so much AI

Apple is hoping to make WWDC 2024 memorable as it finally spells out its generative AI plans.

3 days ago
What to expect from WWDC 2024: iOS 18, macOS 15 and so much AI