This week, tech jargon was in the spotlight: on Monday, regulators suspended operations of First Republic Bank and JP Morgan announced their purchase of $330 billion worth of assets. This had once again entailed the inconvenience of losing another banking partner within a few weeks for the startups, causing a widespread feeling of malaise. This was further highlighted by Silicon Valley Times’s Senior Reporter and host of Equity, Natasha Mascarenhas’s take on the week’s startup news and trends.
The other influential acronym GPT pronounced its mark on the edtech industry. Mary Ann Azevedo, Christine Hall, and Natasha Mascarenhas with Alex Wilhelm wrote a piece delving into the impact of OpenAI’s ChatGPT. Chegg’s admission that generative AI has caused a decrease in user growth was certainly concerning. This means that entrepreneurs have to ask much harder questions to come up with the best solutions.
To infuse innovation into the startup world, TechCrunch’s Haje Jan Kamps embarked on his Pitch Deck Teardown series. His latest project was done in collaboration with Trulytell, their designer Jake Mueller and their improvement of a startup’s deck made it the perfect pitch deck. It certainly wasn’t easy as easily as evidenced by the earlier statement Kamps made that entrepreneurs must to sense-check their numbers.
Meanwhile, on TechCrunch’s Equity podcast, Natasha Mascarenhas and Chris Farmer of Venture Firm SignalFire discussed the outsider advantage in the edtech sector and balancing insider awareness. Together, the two of them offered an insightful snapshot into the thinking that goes behind slowly monetizing-companies.
One of the big names this week was Shopify who bungled its latest layoffs. This affected their employees who felt like NPCs (Non-Playable Characters). Another big name, RapidAPI, announced significant layoffs within two weeks of cutting 50% of their staff already. At a larger scale, Kenya also made news by targeting crypto and influencers platforms in their new tax plan.
On the international front, TechCrunch+ was abuzz with news of the potential of an Ice-breaking IPO coming from outside of the US. As well as the new AI-powered art, DeepFloyd, that offers an impressive text upgrade.
It is quite clear that this week has been quite an eventful one with several tech companies highlighting the importance of their role and the sector’s growth. It will be interesting to see how the industry has evolved during the upcoming weeks and months.
