Extra Crunch Tuesday:

Extra Crunch Newsletter

Tuesday, December 08, 2020 • By Walter Thompson

Making sense of Klarna Image Credits: Bryce Durbin / TechCrunch “Buy now, pay later” is an ancient concept, but Swedish fintech giant Klarna has leveraged the idea to build a company now valued at $10.65 billion. Klarna has 90 million customers, adding 21 million in just the last year. Each day, its platform processes more than a million transactions. “People – including my editors – will ask why I went deep on one company,” says reporter Steve O’Hear, who interviewed co-founder and CEO Sebastian Siemiatkowski for Extra Crunch. “The truth is, the more I learned about Klarna’s story the more I got interested. It’s a European story and full of nuance around business, lending, two-sided marketplaces and where fintech might be heading.” Thanks very much for reading Extra Crunch; I hope you have a great week. Walter Thompson Senior Editor, TechCrunch @yourprotagonist Read more

Is 2020 bringing more edtech rounds than ever, or does it simply feel that way? Image Credits: Nigel Sussman Following the industry-wide trend of “later and larger,” VCs are flowing more money to edtech startups, but across fewer rounds. In the first half of the year, there were 629 funding rounds worth $4.92 billion. In the second half, edtech startups received $6.4 billion in 387 rounds. “A similar trend is happening all over the venture capital and startup world, with more and more VC investment as a percentage of the whole tied up in megarounds,” reports Alex Wilhelm. Read more

Join a Q&A with General Catalyst's Peter Boyce and Katherine Boyle today at 8pm GST/4 pm EST/1 pm PST Sponsored by TechCrunch We'll discuss trends and industries they find exciting, get their advice for early-stage startups and hear how the VC landscape has changed during 2020. Read more

3 questions to ask before adopting microservice architecture Image Credits: Andriy Onufriyenko / Getty Images Madison Friedman, an investor intern and an MBA candidate at the Wharton School of Business, interviewed more than two dozen experts from some of the largest tech companies to learn about how they built their infrastructure. Most companies won’t adopt microservice architecture until they’ve hired a critical mass of developers, but eventually, each organization must answer the same questions, he found: How do teams adopt microservices? What are the main challenges organizations face? Which strategies, processes and tools do companies use to overcome these challenges? Read more

The IPO market looks hot as Airbnb and C3.ai raise price targets Image Credits: Nigel Sussman Yesterday, Airbnb and C3.ai both increased their IPO price ranges, plus consumer lending company Upstart and Wish, an e-commerce platform, priced their debuts. “So much for a December slowdown,” says Alex Wilhelm, who calculated valuation ranges for all four companies. Read more

Why Sapphire's Jai Das thinks the Salesforce-Slack deal could succeed Image Credits: Sapphire Ventures In conversation last week during an episode of Extra Crunch Live, Jai Das, president and managing director of Sapphire Ventures, explained why he believes Saleforce’s Slack acquisition creates value. “I think our expectations have really changed tremendously. If even two years ago, if you said a company is worth, I don't know — Slack is worth $18 to $20 billion, maybe it will be worth more — that is a huge, huge, huge exit in enterprise software.” Read highlights from his interview with Alex Wilhelm, or watch/listen to a video with their entire conversation. Read more

Why does TechCrunch cover so many early-stage funding rounds? Image Credits: imagedepotpro / Getty Images The funding round stories TechCrunch publishes each day creates a leaderboard of startups that are winning the day, but they doesn’t tell the full story. Many startups toil for years before their name appears in a funding announcement, while others might be snapped up before they even get to Series A. So what do these stories really signify? Each member of the Equity podcast team shared their take: Alex Wilhelm: Funding rounds are largely rose-tinted trade journalism, but they're worth writing Danny Crichton: I hate funding announcements but write them anyway Natasha Mascarenhas: The stories are so much more than the dollar signs Read more

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