Prospective contributors regularly ask us about which topics Extra Crunch subscribers would like to hear more about, and the answer is always the same:<\/p>\n
Our submission guidelines haven\u2019t changed, but Managing Editor Eric Eldon and I wrote a short post that identifies the topics we\u2019re prioritizing at the moment:<\/p>\n
If you\u2019re a skillful entrepreneur, founder or investor who\u2019s interested in helping someone else build their business, please read our latest guidelines<\/a>, then send your ideas to guestcolumns@techcrunch.com.<\/p>\n Thanks for reading; I hope you have a great weekend.<\/p>\n Walter Thompson Domain experts wanted: Submit your guest articles to Extra Crunch<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n Full Extra Crunch articles are only available to members Image Credits:<\/strong> olegkalina (opens in a new window)<\/span><\/a> \/ Getty Images<\/p>\n Debt is a tool, and like any other \u2014 be it a hammer or handsaw \u2014 it\u2019s extremely valuable when used skillfully but can cause a lot of pain when mismanaged. This is a story about how it can go right.<\/p>\n Mario Ciabarra, the founder and CEO of Quantum Metric, breaks down how his company was on a \u201ctremendous growth curve\u201d \u2014 and then the pandemic hit.<\/p>\n \u201cAs the weeks following the initial shelter-in-place orders ticked by, the rush toward digital grew exponentially, and opportunities to secure new customers started piling up,\u201d Ciabarra writes. \u201cA solution to our money problems, perhaps? Not so fast \u2014 it was a classic case of needing to spend in order to make.\u201d<\/p>\n If companies want to preserve equity, debt can be an advantageous choice. Here\u2019s how Quantum Metric did it.<\/p>\n Opting for a debt round can take you from Series A startup to Series B unicorn<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n Image Credits:<\/strong> mucahiddin \/ Getty Images<\/p>\n People have been working to optimize customer experiences (CX) since we began selling things to each other.<\/span><\/p>\n A famous San Francisco bakery has an exhaust fan at street level; each morning, its neighbors awake to the scent of orange-cinnamon morning buns wafting down the block. Similarly, savvy hairstylists know to greet returning customers by asking if they want a repeat or something new.<\/span><\/p>\n Online, CX may encompass anything from recommending the right shoes to AI that knows when to send a frustrated traveler an upgrade for a delayed flight.<\/span><\/p>\n In light of Qualtrics\u2019 spinout and IPO and Sprinklr\u2019s recent S-1, Rebecca Liu-Doyle, principal at Insight Partners, describes four key attributes shared by \u201ccompanies that have upped their CX game.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n 4 proven approaches to CX strategy that make customers feel loved<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n Image Credits:<\/strong> We Are (opens in a new window)<\/span><\/a> \/ Getty Images<\/p>\n What is a microblogging service doing buying a social podcasting company and a newsletter tool while also building a live broadcasting sub-app? Is there even a strategy at all?<\/p>\n Yes. Twitter is trying to revitalize itself by adding more contexts for discourse to its repertoire. The result, if everything goes right, will be an influence superapp that hasn\u2019t existed anywhere before. The alternative is nothing less than the destruction of Twitter into a link-forwarding service.<\/p>\n Let\u2019s talk about how Twitter is trying to eat the public conversation.<\/p>\n Twitter\u2019s acquisition strategy: Eat the public conversation<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n Image Credits:<\/strong> Nigel Sussman (opens in a new window)<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n Although it was a truncated holiday week here in the United States, there was a bushel of IPO news. We sorted through the updates and came up with a series of sentiment calls regarding these public offerings.<\/p>\n Earlier this week, we took a look at:<\/p>\n Reading the IPO market\u2019s tea leaves<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n Image Credits:<\/strong> Nigel Sussman<\/p>\n Part 4 of Expensify\u2019s EC-1 digs into the company\u2019s engineering and technology, with Anna Heim<\/a> noting that the\u00a0group of P2P pirates\/hackers<\/a> set out to build an expense management app by sticking to their gut and making their own rules.<\/p>\n They asked questions few considered, like: Why have lots of employees when you can find a way to get work done and reach impressive profitability with a few<\/a>? Why work from an office in San Francisco when the internet lets you work from anywhere, even\u00a0a sailboat in the Caribbean?<\/a><\/p>\n It makes sense in a way: If you\u2019re a pirate, to hell with the rules, right?<\/p>\n With that in mind, one could assume Expensify decided to ask itself: Why not build our own totally custom tech stack?<\/p>\n Indeed, Expensify has made several tech decisions that were met with disbelief, but its belief in its own choices has paid off over the years, and the company is ready to IPO<\/a>\u00a0any day now.<\/p>\n How much of a tech advantage Expensify enjoys owing to such choices is an open question, but one thing is clear: These choices are key to understanding Expensify and its roadmap. Let\u2019s take a look.<\/p>\n How Expensify hacked its way to a robust, scalable tech stack<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n Image Credits:<\/strong> Getty Images<\/p>\n The news this week that e-commerce marketplace Etsy will buy Depop, a startup that provides a secondhand e-commerce marketplace, for more than $1.6 billion may not have made a large impact on the acquiring company\u2019s share price thus far, but it provides a fascinating look into what brands may be willing to pay for access to the Gen Z market.<\/p>\n Etsy is buying Gen Z love. Think about it \u2014 Gen Z is probably not the first demographic that comes to mind when you consider Etsy, so you can see why the deal may pencil out in the larger company\u2019s mind.<\/p>\n But it isn\u2019t cheap. The lesson from the Etsy-Depop deal appears to be that large e-commerce players are willing to splash out for youth-approved marketplaces. That\u2019s good news for yet-private companies that are popular with the budding generation.<\/p>\n Etsy asks, \u2018How do you do, fellow kids?\u2019 with $1.6B Depop purchase<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n Image Credits:\u00a0<\/strong>Andriy Onufriyenko\u00a0\/\u00a0Getty Images<\/p>\n Confluent became the latest company to announce its intent to take the IPO route, officially filing its S-1 paperwork this week.<\/p>\n The company, which has raised over $455 million since it launched in 2014, was most recently valued at just over $4.5 billion when it raised $250 million last April.<\/p>\n What does Confluent do? It built a streaming data platform on top of the open-source Apache Kafka project. In addition to its open-source roots, Confluent has a free tier of its commercial cloud offering to complement its paid products, helping generate top-of-funnel inflows that it converts to sales.<\/p>\n What we can see in Confluent is nearly an old-school, high-burn SaaS business. It has taken on oodles of capital and used it in an increasingly expensive sales model.<\/p>\n Confluent\u2019s IPO brings a high-growth, high-burn SaaS model to the public markets<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n Image Credits:<\/strong> Orla (opens in a new window)<\/span><\/a> \/ Getty Images<\/p>\n Would you like to work with private equity and venture capital funds?<\/p>\n There are relatively few jobs directly inside private equity and venture capital funds, and those jobs are highly competitive.<\/p>\n However, there are many other ways you can work and earn money within the industry \u2014 as a consultant, an interim executive, a board member, a deal executive partnering to buy a company, an executive in residence or as an entrepreneur in residence.<\/p>\n Let\u2019s take a look at the different ways you can work with the investment community.<\/p>\n How to win consulting, board and deal roles with PE and VC funds<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n Image Credits:<\/strong> Nigel Sussman (opens in a new window)<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n Even among the most valuable tech shops, shareholder return is concentrated in share price appreciation<\/em>, and buybacks, which is the same thing to a degree.<\/p>\n Slowly growing tech companies worth single-digit billions can\u2019t play the buyback game to the same degree as the majors. And they are growing more slowly, so even a similar buyback program in relative scale would excite less.<\/p>\n Grow or die, in other words. Or at least grow or come under heavy fire from external investors who want to oust the founder-CEO and \u201creform\u201d the company. But if you can grow quickly, welcome to the land of milk and honey.<\/p>\n Even among the most valuable tech shops, shareholder return is concentrated in share price appreciation<\/em>, and buybacks, which is the same thing to a degree.<\/p>\n Slowly growing tech companies worth single-digit billions can\u2019t play the buyback game to the same degree as the majors. And they are growing more slowly, so even a similar buyback program in relative scale would excite less.<\/p>\n Grow or die, in other words. Or at least grow or come under heavy fire from external investors who want to oust the founder-CEO and \u201creform\u201d the company. But if you can grow quickly, welcome to the land of milk and honey.<\/p>\n The existential cost of decelerated growth<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n Image Credits:<\/strong> Carol Yepes (opens in a new window)<\/span><\/a> \/ Getty Images<\/p>\n There is a growing group of entrepreneurs who are betting that hormonal health is the key wedge into the digital health boom.<\/p>\n Hormones are fluctuating, ever-evolving, and diverse \u2014 but these founders say they\u2019re also key to solving many health conditions that disproportionately impact women, from diabetes to infertility to mental health challenges.<\/p>\n Many believe it\u2019s that complexity that underscores the opportunity. Hormonal health sits at the center of conversations around personalized medicine and women\u2019s health: By 2025,\u00a0women\u2019s health could be a $50 billion industry,\u00a0and by 2026, digital health more broadly is\u00a0estimated to hit $221 billion.<\/p>\n Still, as funding for women\u2019s health startups drops and stigma continues to impact where venture dollars go, it\u2019s unclear whether the sector will remain in its infancy or hit a true inflection point.<\/p>\n Hormonal health is a massive opportunity: Where are the unicorns?<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n
\nSenior Editor, TechCrunch
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\nUse discount code ECFriday<\/strong><\/a> to save 20% off a one- or two-year subscription<\/i><\/p>\n
\nOpting for a debt round can take you from Series A startup to Series B unicorn<\/h2>\n
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4 proven approaches to CX strategy that make customers feel loved<\/h2>\n
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Twitter\u2019s acquisition strategy: Eat the public conversation<\/h2>\n
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Reading the IPO market\u2019s tea leaves<\/h2>\n
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How Expensify hacked its way to a robust, scalable tech stack<\/h2>\n
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Etsy asks, \u2018How do you do, fellow kids?\u2019 with $1.6B Depop purchase<\/h2>\n
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Confluent\u2019s IPO brings a high-growth, high-burn SaaS model to the public markets<\/h2>\n
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How to win consulting, board and deal roles with PE and VC funds<\/h2>\n
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The existential cost of decelerated growth<\/h2>\n
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Hormonal health is a massive opportunity: Where are the unicorns?<\/h2>\n
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3 lessons we learned after raising $6.3M from 50 investors<\/h2>\n
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