Extra Crunch Friday: The TechCrunch Exchange drops tomorrow

Welcome to Extra Crunch Friday

One of the joys of working at TechCrunch: everyone on the staff is a nerd on some level.

Back in middle school, some kids collected Pokemon cards or played Magic: The Gathering. Senior Editor Alex Wilhelm, on the other hand, read the print edition of The Wall Street Journal.

Tomorrow morning, he launches a weekly newsletter that studies the latest developments in startups, markets and money.

The TechCrunch Exchange newsletter weaves a narrative from his weekday stories that dive into the latest funding rounds, S-1s, conversations with investors and entrepreneurs, and publicly available information.

This week, he studied the latest developments in the public markets; despite a wearying level of uncertainty, “this is the IPO market unicorns were waiting for,” he wrote on Wednesday, assessing the strong debut of Jamf, an Apple-device management company.

On Thursday, he turned his attention to the strength of insurtech marketplaces, specifically looking at Lemonade’s post-IPO price jump to see if it offers any insight into Hippo’s $150 million Series E.

Today, he ends the week with a provocative question: are insuretech startups undervalued?

Adding Root and Metromile to to the cohort of companies under consideration, he attempts to stake out their value relative to the larger players, because “how they exit will help determine the results of many a venture fund.”

Alex’s daily analysis is fascinating to read, and it’s exciting to edit such top-level business writing. Sign up here to subscribe to The Exchange newsletter. To read his column every day, become an Extra Crunch member.

Have a great weekend,

Walter Thompson
Senior Editor, TechCrunch
@yourprotagonist

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Edtech startups flirt with unicorn-style growth

The edtech funding boom continues: Coursera announced its $130 million Series F a day after it was reported that Udemy was seeking a $3 billion valuation.

“This momentum is hardly surprising,” reports Natasha Mascarenhas. “Earlier in the pandemic, MasterClass raised $100 million, Quizlet became a unicorn and BYJU’S became India’s second-most-valuable startup.”

For her latest look at edtech, she gathered feedback and impressions from a number of investors about future IPO candidates and explored “other uses of six-figure rounds in the education market.”

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Dear Sophie: How should I prepare for a green card interview?

Dear Sophie:

My employer sponsored me and my family for green cards. We’re expecting to get a green card interview scheduled soon. What should we expect and how should we prepare for our interview?

— Nervous in Newark

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Messenger tools can help you recover millions in lost revenue

Offering real-time customer support on your website will help you retain users who’ll generate revenue — but you need to know which ones are worth reaching out to.

Big brands use messenger tools to offer live chat, but any startup that’s sensible about web analytics can recover lost revenue by picking the right candidate pages, observing user flow and giving customers “breathing room.”

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Diaspora Ventures explains how AngelList’s rolling venture funds work

Romain Dillet interviewed Ilan Abehassera and Carlos Diaz, co-founders of Diaspora Ventures, a new VC fund that focuses on French founders working anywhere in the world.

The pair used AngelList’s Rolling Venture Funds to spin up quickly; to date, Diaspora Ventures has received $3 million, with more to come. If the model takes off, rolling funds could turn VC into “a sort of subscription product,” writes Romain.

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The cybersecurity industry needs to reinvent itself

When it comes to cloud security, 93% of cybersecurity professionals in one survey said they are “moderately or extremely concerned.”

Reforming the industry requires “a broader transformation,” writes Nir Zuk, co-founder and CTO of Palo Alto Networks.

“Organizations of all sizes must adopt a new model for scaling and delivering cybersecurity, one that looks at security holistically, from the data center to the edge to multiple clouds.”

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When choosing a tech stack, look before you leap

The tech stack you select will inform the way your company is perceived in the market and could make it easier — or harder — to recruit and retain top talent.

To learn more about this fundamental decision, Ron Miller spoke to HappyFunCorp CEO and co-founder Ben Schippers and CTO Jon Evans at this week’s TechCrunch Early Stage conference.

Schippers and Evans have customized software for Samsung, AMC, WeWork and Amazon, “so they know a thing or two about the subject,” writes Ron.

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