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Friday, and all eyes are on the vast number of Twitter employees who were given the boot, unceremoniously, with many of ’em finding out they’d lost their job because they were unable to log in to their email accounts as they showed up for work in the morning. Yikes. — Christine and Haje
The TechCrunch Top 3
- Not enough WARNing: Twitter is performing a massive layoff, as reported by Amanda and Catherine. The company is now looking at a class action lawsuit alleging Elon Musk did not give the proper legal notice when making said layoffs. Sarah and Ivan have more.
- More ways to pays: Venmo and PayPal are following suit behind Stripe and Square to begin supporting Apple’s Tap to Pay on iPhones, Ivan writes.
- Pedal to the metal: Connie is in Lisbon covering the Web Summit conference and has this story on Formula 1’s Toto Wolff, who said he was looking for remote software to get his racing team that checkered flag again.
Startups and VC
If you’re running a company that’s shipping hundreds of thousands of boxes of frozen meat around, you probably don’t want to run every detail of your supply chain yourself. That’s what outsourcing is for — so why did ButcherBox build two dry ice factories during the pandemic? It turns out it was a combination of removing risk and making the most of financial incentives, Haje reports.
Commercial electric vehicle company Arrival received a warning from the Nasdaq Stock Market because its stock price is trading too low, Rebecca reports. The company issued a press release saying it received a notification that it was not in compliance with the Nasdaq’s requirement to trade ordinary shares above $1.00 per share for 30 consecutive business days preceding the date of notification.
And in other cheerful news…
What investors really think about the TAM slide in your pitch deck
Image Credits: Bryce Durbin / TechCrunch
Are you ready to launch a bajillion-dollar startup? Before you start: Are you planning to build a centaur, a unicorn, or perhaps a decacorn?
Startup pitching has become an existential drama, in part because so many founders exaggerate the size of the total addressable market (TAM) in which they hope to compete.
“The way it’s calculated and the way the founder is thinking about it tells us not necessarily about the business or its future, but about how the founder thinks about company creation,” said Deena Shakir, a partner at Lux Capital.
Three more from the TC+ team:
TechCrunch+ is our membership program that helps founders and startup teams get ahead of the pack. You can sign up here. Use code “DC” for a 15% discount on an annual subscription!
Big Tech Inc.
Sorry, we have to have another Twitter day, but we promise to include some other really cool articles, too. First, Amanda wonders if porn is a way for the social media giant to recoup some of its losses and make more money. Meanwhile, Kyle reached out to a lot of Twitter’s advertisers to see what their plans are in light of the Elon Musk takeover. Spoiler, they are pausing spending.
And we have five more for you: