Hey — It's Nico.

This newsletter contains:

• 1 failed startup.
• 5 resources for founders.
• 5 startup news.
• 1 hot startup.

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Failed startup of the week: Avail Finance

Ride-hailing giant, Ola, has decided to shut down its fintech subsidiary, Avail Finance, which they had acquired in March 2022 for an estimated $50M.

Founded by Tushar Mehndiratta and Ankush Aggarwal, Avail Finance provided short-term loans of Rs 5,000-10,000 to India's gig workers and blue-collar workforce.

This week, Ola announced they were discontinuing operations of several of its loss-making ventures, including Avail Finance. They have stated they will continue to use Avail Finance’s software and integrate it with Ola Money.

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What to check this week?

💰 We’ve partnered with Notion to bring you 7 templates that will help you raise your next round of funding.

📈 Shaan Puri and Sam Parr talk about making $Ms tracking and selling access to trends.

💵 This founder started a Twitter growth tool 18 months ago and has just sold it for 8 figures.

🔥 Packy McCormick wrote about why differentiation is so important for a business.

🤖 Capitalizing on trends can be a powerful growth strategy - here's how to use the AI trend to grow.

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What happened this week?

☠️ JPMorgan shut down Frank, a college financial aid platform it paid $175 million for, and accused its founder of inventing millions of accounts.

💵 Discord acquired Gas, the popular app for teens to compliment each other. Nikita Bier launched it in August 2022 and had since been building it in public through Twitter.

🎨 Artists launched a copyright lawsuit against AI art generators Stable Diffusion and Midjourney.

✉️ Sam Bankman-Fried launched a Substack newsletter and wrote an issue in which he blames Binance's CEO for the demise of FTX.

📦 Amazon will be bring Prime shipping to more third-party sites from January 31st.

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Hot startup of the week: Carry1st

​Carry1st, an African mobile gaming company, has raised $27M, led by Bitkraft Ventures and a16z.

Given the difficult fundraising environment, this is a huge accomplishment for the organization. According to CEO Cordel Robbin-Coker in an interview with GamesBeat, the fundraising, which comes on the heels of a $20M round the company raised only a year ago, was made feasible by the company's rapid expansion.

The money will be used to develop internally produced titles, with a focus on creating locally developed games tailored to the African market.

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What do you think of today's newsletter?

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Cheers,

Nico