Web3 Project Tool Thirdweb Closes $ 5 Million Round With Help From Mark Cuban, Gary Vaynerchuk – TechCrunch

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Hello and welcome to the Daily Crunch on Monday, December 13! Today’s theme is crypto, or web3 if you prefer that rebranding. Why? Because it turns out that an NFT project is creating a game, a new startup wants to bring crypto and no-code together and there are several other news about web3 startups on our pages today.

Yes, we also have our normal series of fundraising rounds, unicorn outings, etc. But, buckle up for a token conversation! –Alexis

The Top 3 TechCrunch

• Chinese IPO pending: SenseTime’s IPO was expected to raise around $ 767 million in a Hong Kong listing. However, after being on a U.S. tech blacklist on Friday, the IPO is on hold. As Didi seeks to pull out of U.S. markets, seeing such a high-profile Hong Kong debut on hold isn’t a good idea for China’s tech liquidity.
• Are you bored at Ape Yacht Club game? If you’re not a fan of the Bored Ape Yacht Club NFT series – I’m not, for what it’s worth – you might not be excited to hear it, but there’s a game coming up. from the collection of images. If this is successful, expect many games to be built on top of other NFT IPs. Quickly I wonder what the size of the market is for this game, given that there are only 10,000 images in the series.
• UK reviews Microsoft-Nuance deal: A $ 19.7 billion deal between Microsoft and “speech-to-text specialist Nuance,” as TechCrunch puts it, has undergone regulatory scrutiny by a UK watchdog. This is the prelude to an investigation, it seems, but the fact that Microsoft is reviewing even a second glance could chill other big buys by the tech world’s mega-bodies.

Startups / VC

A few themes are evident today, notably the startup exit market and crypto. We’ll cover them first, then finish with the rest of today’s startup news.

Exits :

• So much for this pop IPO: A number of IPOs in 2020 and 2021 had very strong performance on day one and early trading gains. This has led to numerous complaints that technology offerings are being purposely mispriced, to the benefit of bank customers. Well, we took a look back and the numbers with a little bit of time are a lot less clear than they once seemed.
• The robot company Symbotics will go public via SPAC: After securing greater engagement from huge U.S. retailer Walmart, Symbotics decided to pursue a public listing through a PSPC, or blank check company. The deal will notably see the link between the robot company and SVF Investment Corp. by Softbank Investment Advisers. 3.
• Electric motorcycle company LiveWire to go public via a SPAC: Have you ever heard the pneumonia sound of a Harley-Davidson motorcycle? Well it turns out that the company Also manufactures electric bicycles. Who knew! The deal, according to TechCrunch, will allow Harley to keep a good stake in the business while injecting capital into the business. We’re just happy the company makes bikes that don’t sound like their motors are full of used dentures.

And then, crypto:

• Thirdweb raises $ 5 million for the union of crypto and no-code: What Thirdweb is doing looks cool. TechCrunch reports that the company’s software helps “developers build, launch and manage their web3 projects without writing any lines of code.” Anything that makes technology more generally accessible is fine with us, including, yes, crypto.
• Fractal is an NFT games marketplace built on Solana: Does this make sense to you? If not, let me help you. Fractal is a company that is building a market to sell non-fungible gaming-related tokens on the Solana blockchain, which rivals Ethereum and Bitcoin. How does gambling enter the speculative world of NFTs? Well, now there are games to play to win where players are rewarded with NFTs instead of, say, Internet Points. So you can trade them on Fractal I guess.
• NBA Top Shot takes another photo: Dapper Labs has become known as the team behind the NBA Top Shot NFT series which was in vogue some time ago. Today, the $ 7.6 billion company is back with its next product called The Warehouse. I can’t really improve on what our own Lucas Matney wrote, so here it is: The Warehouse is “an ambitious NFT showcase that startups hope will serve as a hub for web3 digital identity, allowing users to create animated avatars and equip them. with crypto accessories. As with all crypto projects, I’m not sure if this is going to be a success or a flop.

The rest :

• The former director of Twitter India is launching an edtech startup: Twitter and India get along as well as any authoritarian government with the social network. But now the former head of the company in the country, Manish Maheshwari, “is leaving the company to start an edtech startup, according to nine people familiar with the matter.” Something to watch out for.
• SnapLogic is now worth $ 1 billion: The world of NFT may have made more headlines than enterprise software lately, but that hasn’t stopped the more staid parts of startup country from continuing to do business. SnapLogic is indicative of this fact, raising $ 165 million to a new higher valuation. The new unicorn helps businesses take their work digitally to connect their different data sources and workflows.
• The names of weird startups are still there: Say hello to Whym, founded by former Snap employees. The startup is working on mobile e-commerce, a part of the larger world of digital shopping that may still require work. I say this as someone who sometimes buys things on their phone and has handled all the fun that comes with it. Whym just raised $ 4.3 million.
• Notus wants to help you find the right influencer for your brand: The world of influencer marketing has become mature enough that finding your next avatar in the market is now a business. Notus has raised $ 1.25 million to create a software department to help brands of all kinds find who they should hire to represent their businesses. Cared for!

Conversational UX: the missing piece of your chatbot strategy

Image credits: krung99 (Opens in a new window) / Getty Images

We don’t run a lot of TechCrunch + articles focused on basic best practices, but we do make exceptions when it comes to emerging technology posts – in this case, conversational UX.

It’s notoriously difficult for software to mimic human conversation. Many chatbots are so incompetent that they take a long time to spend press 0 for an operator.

“While chatbots are largely intended to handle simple customer service tasks, there is scope to evolve both customer service and sales messaging,” writes Raghu Ravinutala, CEO and co-founder of Yellow. ai, a conversational CX platform.

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

Big Tech Inc.

• Reply to this Instagram with a TIC Tac Reel: TechCrunch noted today that Instagram, the photo sharing app built by Meta, has introduced “Reels Visual Replies”. The feature will allow Instagram users to create shortened video replies to other posts. So it’s like personal gifs I guess. Which is cool if people are using them. Let’s see.
• Mozilla is a huge company: Of course we switched to Chrome, but not everyone do. In fact, so many people still use Mozilla products that the company is expected to generate around $ 500 million this year. Not bad! And good news for competition from browsers.

TechCrunch Experts

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