Extra Crunch Friday: Why I’m hitting pause on ARR-focused coverage

Extra Crunch Newsletter

Friday, March 12, 2021 • By Walter Thompson and Annie Siebert

Welcome to Extra Crunch Friday Image Credits: Nigel Sussman One of the first recurring features Alex Wilhelm established at Extra Crunch was the “$100M ARR Club,” ongoing coverage of startups that have reached scale. “Forget a $1 billion valuation — $100 million in annual recurring revenue is the cool kids’ club,” he wrote in December 2019. Since then, he expanded it to cover companies that attained $50M ARR. The concept is a useful lens for studying the market. I can say this with confidence because it’s been widely copied by other tech news outlets. But this morning, Alex surprised me — he’s shelving the ARR Club, at least for now. “In the end it became a pre-IPO list that was fun but not entirely educational, by my reckoning,” he told me. “The $50M ARR club evolution was supposed to help shake loose more interesting operational details, but just didn’t.” Before putting the format on hiatus, Alex’s last ARR Club roundup looks at in-office display and kiosk startup AppSpace, data backup unicorn Druva, and Synack, which makes security software. Thanks very much to new Editor Annie Siebert for producing the summaries below! I hope you have a fantastic weekend. Walter Thompson Senior Editor, TechCrunch @yourprotagonist Read more

Welcome to Bloxburg, public investors Image Credits: Steve Jennings / Getty Images As Roblox began to trade Wednesday, the company's shares shot above its reference price of $45 per share. Roblox, a gaming company aimed at children, has had a tumultuous if exciting path to the public markets. Seeing Roblox trade so very far above its direct listing reference price and final private valuation appears to undercut the argument that this sort of debut can sort out pricing issues inherent in more traditional IPOs. Read more

TC Early Stage 2021: Operations & Fundraising Sponsored by TechCrunch Use discount code ECNEWSLETTER to take 20% off a ticket for this 2-day virtual bootcamp for founders and investors. Read more

4 ways startups will drive GPT-3 adoption in 2021 Image Credits: Zastrozhnov / Getty Images Trained on trillions of words, GPT-3 is a 175-billion parameter transformer model — the third of such models released by OpenAI. GPT-3 is remarkable in its ability to generate human-like text and responses, able to return coherent and topical emails, tweets, trivia and much more. In 2021, this technology will power the launch of a thousand new startups and applications. Read more

There have never been more $100M+ fintech rounds than right now Image Credits: Nigel Sussman We are in a period of all-time record investment for so-called mega-rounds, or investments of $100 million or more inside the fintech realm. To date, Q1 2021 is ahead and is thus guaranteed to set a new record, having already bested the preceding all-time high. What's going on? Read more

Passive collaboration is essential to remote work's long-term success Image Credits: Alistair Berg / Getty Images Have you ever popped into a meeting because you overheard a snippet of a conversation and wanted to share your perspective? That's passive collaboration — low-friction ways to invite new ideas. But it's only when we're able to fully realize passive collaboration virtually that we'll have unlocked the full potential of remote and hybrid work situations. Read more

Global-e files to go public as e-commerce startups enjoy a renaissance Image Credits: Nigel Sussman Global-e, an e-commerce platform that helps online sellers reach global consumers, filed to go public on Tuesday. Global-e's business exploded amid the pandemic in 2020, and the company expects that the COVID-fueled shift to e-commerce will only lead to future growth.  Read more

Dear Sophie: What are the pros and cons of the H-1B, O-1A and EB-1A? Image Credits: Bryce Durbin/TechCrunch Dear Sophie: I'm an entrepreneur who wants to expand my startup to the U.S. What are the benefits and drawbacks of various types of visas and green cards? The ones I've heard the most about are the H-1B, O-1 and EB-1A. — Intelligent in India Read more

Proactive CEOs should prioritize European expansion Image Credits: Sean Gladwell / Getty Images Many investors will encourage CEOs to remain U.S.-centric this year and perhaps expand their product offering or move into new market segments. But 95% of the world's population lives outside the U.S., making an expansion into Europe your best growth lever.  Read more

Coupang follows Roblox to a strong first day of trading Image Credits: Bloomberg / Getty Images After Roblox debuted on Wednesday, Coupang followed, with shares shooting above the South Korean e-commerce giant's IPO price range. Quick math shows Coupang is worth around $92 billion at the moment, a huge number that nearly zero companies will ever reach. Read more

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