Friday, April 19, 2024

Image Credits: Andreessen Horowitz

Good afternoon, and welcome to TechCrunch PM. We made it to Friday, and as a special treat, I snuck some sports technology into the newsletter. But before you get to that, I hope you take some time to meet Andreessen Horowitz’s new general partner, and see if Haje liked Geodesic.Life’s pre-seed deck. Also, find out what’s up with fintech. And with that, I hope you have a great weekend!

TechCrunch Top 3

Image Credits: Anastasia Usenko / Getty Images

Meet Jennifer Li: The new Andreessen Horowitz general partner will work with Martin Casado to deploy a $1.25 billion Infrastructure fund into some deserving startups. Li is one of only four GPs on the Infrastructure team. Read More

Webflow acquires Intellimize: In the increasingly personalized world, not making your website fit your users is going to cost you. Weblow, a web design and hosting platform, saw the writing on the wall and made its first acquisition in the marketing optimization space. Intellimize provides personalization and optimization capabilities, and in its relatively short life has made quite an impression. Read More

What happens when Wall Street isn’t feeling it: When a rumor surfaced that Salesforce intended on acquiring Informatica, it was investors who weren’t so keen on the idea. Alex Wilhelm and Ron Miller dig into why. Read More

Afternoon must-reads

Image Credits: Screenshot by TechCrunch

RIP, Post News: Trying to be the next Twitter is a challenging endeavor. Post News emerged as an alternative about a year and a half ago, but alas, could not sustain it. Founder Noam Bardin said in a post that its service “is not growing fast enough to become a real business or a significant platform” in terms of consumer adoption. Read More

The Midas touch: Portage of Canada led a $45 million round of funding into Midas, a fintech startup that allows people in Turkey to invest in U.S. and Turkish equities. Rather than just offer a place to invest, Midas aims to also educate users about the companies as a way to entice more people to get into investing. Read More

The B2B winds die down for MarketForce: The Kenyan e-commerce company points to a mix of operational, economical and financial challenges that is forcing the company to shut down the business-to-business side of its operations. Read More

Pitch Deck Teardown: Haje Jan Kamps sifted through Geodesic.Life’s pre-seed deck and found some things that the Ukraine-based startup is doing well — and some things that needed improvement. Check out what the affordable, eco-friendly, prefabricated dome homes company is doing. Read More

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Around the web

The next time you watch an NCAA football game, you may see some new technology rules at play. The collegiate sporting organization approved such rules as an automatic timeout in the second and fourth quarters and the type and length of communication from coach to player, the NCAA reports.

Meanwhile, Coinbase analyst David Han’s latest report shows that “the direction of digital asset markets following the bitcoin halving is more likely to be driven by macroeconomic factors even as crypto fundamentals remain strong,” CoinDesk reports.

And if you’re looking for that perfect Mother’s Day gift for a techy mom, The Verge has a list for you.

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TechCrunch Minute

Quantum computing’s next era could be led by Microsoft and Quantinuum: The tech world is incredibly focused on AI and its applications today, but artificial intelligence is hardly the only place where progress is being made. Let’s talk about the recent announcement from Microsoft and Quantinuum. Hit play!