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Hello and happy Tuesday! Today we celebrate jagmeet join the londonbusinessblog.com crew. He is hitting the road hard with his inaugural story on the site, detailing how Wheelocity is raising $12 million for its fresh trade supply chain network in India. Give him a warm welcome — as by give him a follow on Twitter†
Oh, and good news for robotics fans, Brian chat with Ayanna Howard and Ayah Bdeir about the changing face of robotics in our Twitter Spaces. Tune in tomorrow, July 13 at 2pm PT/ 5pm ET following the @londonbusinessblog.com Twitter account; we’ll announce it when we start! † Christine and hi
The londonbusinessblog.com Top 3
- Just a ‘recast’: Microsoft is the latest big tech company to announce layoffs. It is only a small part of the workforce – less than 1% of the 180,000 workforce – and Kylea reports that the company said the move was the result of “realigning business groups and roles.” We have a feeling there will be more announcements from other companies doing the same.
- Who knew a whiteboard could be so exciting?: Fireplace display, that’s who. The startup raised $2.8 million to turn your whiteboard into a 27-inch screen to show off the family’s to-do list. Ivan writes. It has a bit of a hefty pre-order price tag – $499. It comes with 2 years of free software, but better get it now before that gets to $699 with $9 a month for software.
- Hopefully no one got hurt: SpaceX’s Starship test last night ended in an explosion. darrell has more.
Startups and VC
They say there’s a market swing going on, but you wouldn’t think so given the number of new funds and venture capital firms announced today. Six of them, in fact:
Wow! That was a lot of new funds in one day. But don’t worry, we also have non-fund news:
- Airlift comes down to land† manish reports that the Pakistani airlift is being shut down, citing funding and market conditions.
- The machines are still learning† Kylea reports that Tecton is raising a whopping $100 million, demonstrating that machine learning remains a growth market.
- oh it’s nothing: A shiny new smartphone is in the works as Nothing’s Phone (1) has been officially announced, Brian reports.
- Living on the edge: Another monster run in the computing space as Scale Computing secures $55 million to help businesses manage their edge computing infrastructure, Kylea writes.
- Hello swimmers: Posterity Health aims to help meet the fertility needs of men, Kate reports.
- Dude, where? to be you?: It is annoying not being able to hear the person on the other end of the line. New technology is on the way in the form of this open source earbud project, reports hi†
- We are charged!: In a world where many cars are switching to battery power, battery recycling is seeing a lot of interest from investors, reports Jaclyn†
Karl Alomar of M13: Six Strategies for Leading Startups through a Recession
Image Credits: horstgerlach (Opens in a new window) / Getty Images
Basic best practices won’t help your business this winter, so we invited M13 managing partner Karl Alomar to join us on a Twitter Space to discuss six strategies for leading startups through a recession:
- Using “Relentless Prioritization” to find evidence points.
- Investors still expect ‘healthy growth’.
- Why founders need to secure 24+ months of runway.
- How to talk to your investors about pivoting.
- If it’s okay to leave money on the table.
- What else to do to raise money during a recession.
Based on his time leading startups through the dot-com implosion of 2000 and the Great Recession of 2008, Alomar says it’s critical for founders to be strategic, not reactive.
“The decisions you make in your business will affect all the people who work for you, so you need to be able to manage and communicate with all those stakeholders very effectively,” he said.
(londonbusinessblog.com+ is our membership program that helps founders and startup teams move forward. You can register here†
Big Tech Inc.
Walmart’s new agreement with Canoo to order 4,500 electric vehicles for last-mile delivery seems to come at a good time for Canoo. Kirsten writes that in May, the company warned investors that it may not have enough money to stay in business. The news also gave Canoo a nice rise in its share price.
In the latest Twitter saga, the social media giant’s lawyers call Elon Musk’s attempt to get out of a takeover deal “unvalid and illegitimate.” Ivan writes. All this drama is dragging Twitter stocks down. Meanwhile, Twitter allows users to “unment themselves” in tweets, Aisha reports. We think Twitter wishes it could break free from all this nonsense.
We are your place for everything Spotify related. First, Amanda has word about the company acquiring music guessing game Heardle. Definitely something to help you get ready for that next music trivia game night. Then we have Ivan writing about Spotify expanding its video podcast publishing feature to an additional six countries.
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