Jul 26, 2021

Startup Digest Reading List - Metaverse, Creator Fund, M&A, Product Document Templates

Issue #164 — View online — Suggest a link

Startups & Tech

A curated list of the top stories in technology, startups, and venture capital.

Last week, one of our portfolio companies, FTX, raised the largest round for any crypto exchange. Here are the highlights:

⛳️ FTX was founded in May 2019

💰 Raised $900M Series B at $18B valuation

♻️ $10B daily trading volume

📈 75X growth from 2020 (in volume)

👥 1M+ registered users

It’s been an honor to partner with FTX & Sam Bankman since their seed round. Congrats on the milestone!

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Written by Chris McCann, General Partner @ Race Capital, former Greylock Partners. More about me.

Tech News Last Week

Facebook wants to become a “metaverse” company despite its multiple attempts at trying to do this before (Facebook Spaces, Facebook Horizon, etc.).
Restaurant workers are quitting their jobs at a record pace due to low pay, exhausting work, unreliable hours, no benefits, and rude customers.
Square launched Square Banking, a business focused bank account. Checking accounts are handled by Sutton Bank which is surprising given it already has Square Financial Services internally.
Twitter is killing Fleets, their ephemeral post feature.
Shein, the Chinese retailer, is the largest fast fashion retailer in the US. Wild.
Solana launched a $5M creator fund to onboard the next wave of creators to web3. Creators can apply here.

Deep Dive Posts

More retail interest in markets (especially crypto markets) are changing the market structure of these markets. TLDR - More % of retail involvement = more volatility.
Here’s a collection of great product focused document templates including: PRDs, product strategy, go to market, roadmaps, etc.
Lillian Li writes a great primer on the Chinese regulatory landscape including the most recent actions taken against Ant Financial, Alibaba, Meituan, etc.
Big tech has gotten big in large part due to acquisitions. Here are some cool visualizations showing the magnitude of M&A for Apple, Amazon, Google, and Facebook.

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This Startup Digest Reading List goes out to a wide membership base of founders, technologists, investors, and operators. Feel free to share with others, sign up here: https://startups.startupdigest.com/

Techstars Startup Digest Startups & Tech is curated by:

Chris McCann - General Partner @ Race Capital, former Greylock Partners
chris@startupdigest.com

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