Extra Crunch Tuesday: Unpacking Qualtrics’ brand-new S-1 filing

Welcome to Extra Crunch Tuesday

Alex Wilhelm’s final column for 2020 was supposed to have been a look ahead into what the future holds for VC fundraising and next year’s IPO market.

As it turned out, that column was la penúltima, or “one for the road” in Spanish.

Yesterday, he filed a story that studied a new S-1 filing for Qualtrics, an enterprise survey software company that was acquired by SAP in 2018 for $8 billion.

Alex has followed the company for some time, so he was highly motivated to return to his desk and unpack the S-1 even though he’s on vacation until January 4.

After dissecting the company’s revenue and growth, he looked at its core SaaS metrics before asking and answering the central question:

“What’s it worth?”

This is our last Extra Crunch roundup newsletter of 2020; thanks very much to all of you for reading over the last year.

I hope you enjoy health, happiness and prosperity in 2021.

Walter Thompson
Senior Editor, TechCrunch
@yourprotagonist

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Looking ahead after 2020’s epic M&A spree

Ron Miller covered almost 35 enterprise M&A deals in 2020.

“Of those, 15 were worth $1 billion or more, 12 were small enough to not require that the companies disclose the price and the remainder fell somewhere in between.”

For his Extra Crunch end-of-year story, Ron recapped the “biggest, gaudiest deals,” along with several early-stage buyouts that caught his eye.

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Holiday Sale: Save $10 on Extra Crunch membership

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Dear Sophie: What’s ahead for U.S. immigration in 2021?

Dear Sophie:

I’m in people ops and our team is trying to plan ahead for immigration in the new year and beyond.

What’s ahead for U.S. visas and green cards?

—Ready in Redwood City

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The built environment will be one of tech's next big platforms

The shuttered Sidewalk Labs project in Toronto was to be a $1.3 billion development that showcased technology and construction methods “meant to enhance city living and make it more environmentally sustainable,” reports Jon Shieber.

Sidewalk Labs Toronto may become an urban design footnote, but real estate technology companies received $3.7 billion in VC in Q1 2020.

“All of this activity likely means that the rumors of the death of cities has been greatly exaggerated,” says Jon.

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US seed-stage investing flourished during pandemic

As the pandemic began to reshape society in the first few months of 2020, dollars invested in seed-stage startups started to decline — as expected.

By May, the pace accelerated and recovered to pre-pandemic levels. “Then, an epic September result in terms of seed dollars invested… turned Q3 into a madhouse,” reports Natasha Mascarenhas and Alex Wilhelm.

To better understand the up-and-down year for the U.S. seed market, they pored over PitchBook data and spoke to several investors:

• Nihal Mehta, founding general partner, Eniac Ventures
• Jenny Lefcourt, investor, Freestyle
• Mar Hershenson, managing partner, Pear VC
• Eric Tarczynski, founder and managing partner, Contrary Capital

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How Niantic evolved Pokémon GO for the year no one could go anywhere

Last year, Greg Kumparak and Danny Crichton wrote an in-depth study of Niantic, the company that produced breakout game Pokémon GO.

Since the game encourages players to gather in person while exploring physical spaces, many expected interest in the game to cool off during the pandemic.

Instead, analysts estimated in November that Pokémon GO earned $1 billion, its best year ever. How did Niantic manage that feat?

“By twisting some knobs and tweaking variables, Pokémon GO became much easier to play without leaving the house,” writes Greg.

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Streaming services face their real test in 2021

Warner Bros. has gone all-in on streaming: next year, every theatrical release will premiere the same day on HBO Max, its on-demand platform.

The news yanked the rug out from under movie theater chains and Hollywood’s creative community, but about a week later, Disney unveiled a slate of TV shows and feature films that will keep its pipes bursting with content.

“These back-to-back announcements felt like a fitting capstone to a best-of-times, worst-of-times year in the streaming business,” says Anthony Ha.

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