🚀 The battle for Twitter

Plus, the top 100 consumer marketplace companies of 2022!

Apr 17

Graphic is from the Marketplace 100 - see the full list (and disclosures on methodology) here!

This week, our team at a16z dropped the Marketplace 100: 2022 edition! 🎉 The list ranks the top 100 consumer marketplace startups by gross merchandise value (GMV) and website & app traffic.

It was a year of big shakeups - 19 companies from last year’s list “graduated” (IPOed or were acquired), and 37 companies debuted for the first time, which was almost 50% more than last year! Rounding out the top five were names you likely know: Instacart, Valve, SeatGeek, Turo, and StockX.

Live shopping app Whatnot saw the largest YoY jump, moving up 73 spots 📈 to #26. TeachersPayTeachers, which allows teachers to sell their teaching resources & lesson plans, was the highest ranking “freshman” at #8.

The list provided a fascinating look at the COVID bounceback that is occurring in many sectors as life returns to something closer to normal! 👀 Check out the full piece here and Olivia’s summary of the key trends here.

trending 📈

1️⃣ Musk makes an offer: Ten days after disclosing he had become Twitter’s largest investor, Elon Musk submitted an offer to take the company private for $43B. Musk has been outspoken in his criticisms of Twitter’s management. The board has now deployed a “poison pill” strategy that may give them time to generate other options.

To recap last week - Musk initially indicated he would join Twitter’s board, but changed his mind (for undisclosed reasons). He then submitted his takeover bid!

2️⃣ Epic makes moves: Fortnite creator Epic Games raised $2B to build a “kid-friendly metaverse.” The investors? Sony and Kirkbi, Lego’s parent co! Epic announced a long-term partnership with Lego last week, but details are TBA.

3️⃣ Tech giants align on climate: Stripe launched Frontier Fund, a public benefit corporation that has committed to purchasing $925M of carbon dioxide removal in the next nine years. Others joining the initiative include Meta, Alphabet, and Shopify.

4️⃣ Club Penguin reboot shut down: The most serious news of the week? Maybe not. The most devastating? Yes. A fan-made remake of Club Penguin was seized by the London Police after Disney filed IP claims, disappointing 145k Discord fans and leading to three arrests 😬

what we’re following 👀

Graph from Gemini’s 2022 “Global State of Crypto” - read it here!

Curious about what crypto adoption looks like worldwide? Gemini’s 2022 “Global State of Crypto” report is a must read!

The company surveyed 30,000 people across 20 countries about their crypto buying habits. 2021 was undoubtedly a breakout year: more than 40% of the current crypto holders surveyed made their first investment last year.

The most surprising takeaway? Among the countries surveyed, the U.S. ranks only around the median in crypto adoption! ~20% of U.S. consumers own crypto, compared to 30% in Singapore, 35% in the UAE, and 41% in Brazil and Indonesia.

The main driver of this was deflation. Consumers in countries with 50%+ currency devaluation (versus the USD) in the last 10 years were five times more likely to plan to purchase crypto in the next year! Despite volatility in the crypto market, these investors see it as a more stable alternative than their home currency.

Other interesting stats:

Developing countries lead the way in crypto gender parity. In Indonesia and Nigeria, 50%+ of crypto investors are women (vs. 32% in the U.S.).
In eight countries, more than 50% of consumers believe that crypto is the future of money. Brazil 🇧🇷 tops the charts at 66%.
The vast majority of crypto owners worldwide (79%) say they buy crypto for its long-term investment potential - they aren’t active short-term traders.