TechCrunch Newsletters - Extra Crunch Friday: The Roblox Gambit

Welcome to Extra Crunch Friday

In February 2020, gaming platform Roblox was valued at $4 billion, but after announcing a $520 million Series H this week, it’s now worth $29.5 billion.

“Sure, you could argue that Roblox enjoyed an epic 2020, thanks in part to COVID-19,” writes Alex Wilhelm this morning. “That helped its valuation. But there’s a lot of space between $4 billion and $29.5 billion.”

Alex suggests that Roblox’s decision to delay its IPO and raise an enormous Series H was a Grandmaster move that could influence how other unicorns will take themselves to market: “A big thanks to the gaming company for running this experiment for us.”

I asked what inspired the headline; like many good ideas, it came to him while he was trying to get to sleep.

“I think that I had The Queen’s Gambit somewhere in my head, so that formed the root of a little joke with myself. Roblox is making a strategic wager on method of going public. So, ‘gambit’ seems to fit!”

Thanks very much for reading Extra Crunch this week. I hope we can all look forward to a nice, boring weekend with no breaking news alerts.

Walter Thompson
Senior Editor, TechCrunch
@yourprotagonist

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How Segment redesigned its core systems to solve an existential scaling crisis

On Tuesday, enterprise reporter Ron Miller covered a major engineering project at customer data platform Segment called “Centrifuge.”

“Its purpose was to move data through Segment’s data pipes to wherever customers needed it quickly and efficiently at the lowest operating cost,” but as Ron reports, it was also meant to solve “an existential crisis for the young business,” which needed a more resilient platform to maintain growth.

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Extra Crunch Live is back in 2021

Sponsored by TechCrunch

We're offering even more interactivity between audience members and the speakers we host!

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Dear Sophie: Banging my head against the wall understanding the U.S. immigration system

Dear Sophie:

Now that the U.S. has a new president coming in whose policies are more welcoming to immigrants, I am considering coming to the U.S. to expand my company after COVID-19.

However, I’m struggling with the morass of information online that has bits and pieces of visa types and processes.

Can you please share an overview of the U.S. immigration system and how it works so I can get the big picture and understand what I’m navigating?

— Resilient in Romania

The first “Dear Sophie” column of each month is available on TechCrunch without a paywall.

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Revenue-based financing: the next step for private equity and early-stage investment

For founders who aren’t interested in angel investment or seeking validation from a VC, revenue-based investing is growing in popularity.

To gain a deeper understanding of the U.S. RBI landscape, we published an industry report summary on Wednesday that gathered data from 134 companies, 57 funds and 32 investment firms before breaking out “specific verticals and business models… and the typical profile of companies that access this form of capital.”

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Lisbon’s startup scene rises as Portugal gears up to be a European tech tiger

Mike Butcher continues his series of European investor surveys with his latest dispatch from Lisbon, where a nascent startup ecosystem may get a Brexit boost.

Here are the Portugal-based VCs he interviewed:

• Cristina Fonseca, partner, Indico Capital Partners
• Pedro Ribeiro Santos, partner, Armilar Venture Partners
• Tocha, partner, Olisipo Way
• Adão Oliveira, investment manager, Portugal Ventures
• Alexandre Barbosa, partner, Faber
• António Miguel, partner, Mustard Seed MAZE
• Jaime Parodi Bardón, partner, impACT NOW Capital
• Stephan Morais, partner, Indico Capital Partners
• Gavin Goldblatt, managing partner, Portugal Gateway

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How late-stage edtech companies are thinking about tutoring marketplaces

How do you scale online tutoring, particularly when demand exceeds the supply of human instructors?

This month, Chegg is replacing its seven-year-old marketplace that paired students with tutors with a live chatbot.

A spokesperson said the move will “dramatically differentiate our offerings from our competitors and better service students,” but Natasha Mascarenhas identified two challenges to edtech automation.

“A chatbot won’t work for a student with special needs or someone who needs to be handheld a bit more,” she says. “Second, speed tutoring can only work for a specific set of subjects.”

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Decrypted: How bad was the US Capitol breach for cybersecurity?

While I watched insurrectionists invade and vandalize the U.S. Capitol on live TV, I realized that staffers evacuated so quickly, many hadn’t shut down their computers.

Looters even made off with a laptop from Senator Jeff Merkley’s office, but according to security reporter Zack Whittaker, the infosec damages to wasn’t as bad as it looked.

Even so, “the breach will likely present a major task for Congress’ IT departments, which will have to figure out what’s been stolen and what security risks could still pose a threat to the Capitol’s network.”

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