Invite-only Twitter alternative Bluesky tops 1M downloads across iOS and Android

Friday, July 07, 2023

Today, Threads again dominated the news cycle, but Twitter rival Bluesky was not about to take it lying down. The social media platform hit its first 1 million installs, of which 300,000 were done since June 30, when Twitter initially limited the number of tweets users could view each day.

More top stories

Your life in photos: A new social app called Retro is helping users share their personal journeys with close friends via photography. Find out who the founders are behind it.

Well…that leaks: A leak was discovered on a Bangladesh government website that ended up making citizens’ personal data public. Unfortunately, we don’t know which agency it was.

SEO expert in AI form: We know that artificial intelligence is infiltrating so much of our workflow, but there has to be some point where you need to do things yourself…right? Well, SpeedyBrand is here to create SEO-optimized content in case small businesses don’t want to. Learn more.

You can bank on that: Remember when Silicon Valley Bank collapsed? How could we forget? Some fintechs certainly aren’t, because that’s when they found themselves with an abundance of new customers. Here’s a story about one of them.

Remove that app: Apple purged a handful of predatory lending apps from its App Store in India after some users and the media began questioning their legitimacy. Read more.

“Salesforce data hygiene”: That’s how Weflow describes itself and why investors were eager to give the company capital. Find out why.

Clean up on aisle EU: The European Union’s competition unit is taking its turn to look deeper at Amazon’s proposed $1.7 billion acquisition agreement for iRobot. After getting a green light from the United Kingdom last month, Amazon is surely hoping for a clean sweep after the EU finishes up its investigation.

More weekend reading:

The best electric bikes in 2023 for every type of rider

Martin Lewis warns over ‘first’ deepfake video scam ad circulating on Facebook

This $3,000, 32-inch e-ink display brings newspaper front pages to your wall

Google Calendar now lets users specify where they’re working from throughout the day

China wraps up fintech crackdown with big fines on Tencent, Alibaba

Image Credits: Romain Dillet / TechCrunch

Pitch Deck Teardown: Nokod Security’s $8M seed deck

Low-code and no-code startups lowered the bar for developing new applications, but managing sensitive systems with off-the-shelf parts can create security concerns.

Nokod Security recently raised an $8 million seed round to scale its service, which monitors “apps for security vulnerabilities and mitigate breaches,” writes Haje Jan Kamps, who obtained the partially redacted pitch deck they used:

Cover slide
Team slide
Example no-code apps
“Who uses no-code apps”
Macro trend: The Low-Code / No Code trend
Threats and attacks slide
Problem slide
Threats and attacks slide
Attack vectors slide
Mission slide
Solution slide
Architecture slide
TAM slide 1
TAM slide 2
TAM slide 3
Go-to-market slide
Competition slide
Validation slide
(Redacted) Validation takeaways slide
Timeline slide
Contact slide

Three more from TC+:

VC Office Hours: Fabrice do Rego on building one of the few Black-led funds in the EU

Web3 games don’t need to highlight blockchain elements to succeed

Europe is more of a fuzzy tech cloud than a functioning ecosystem

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.