Top News | Niantic sells its mobile gaming business: Niantic, the company behind Pokémon Go and other AR best-sellers, is selling its gaming assets to Scopely for $3.5 billion. Scopely, famous for its Monopoly Go super-hit, is in turned owned by Savvy, which is part of the Saudi sovereign wealth fund. The price tag underscores how lucrative mobile gaming remains — and it’s a nice multi-billion dollar deal for Q1’s eventual aggregate numbers. Wonder snaps up Tastemade: Wonder’s still feeling acquisitive. After buying Blue Apron two years ago and Grubhub last year, the food-and-delivery startup is now plunking down about $90 million, according to the Wall Street Journal, to buy the Tastemade media company. Tastemade has a fleet of food shows and cooking-related content, making it a somewhat natural fit for what Wonder has in the oven. And Tastemade is a venture-backed startup, so this is a deal that nests neatly in our interests. Crunchbase data indicates that Tastemade raised more than $100 million during its life. Later investors, then, probably won’t do so well in the deal, but perhaps Redpoint and Raine Ventures — which got in early — made out alright. Google nixes the Honey loophole: Back in 2019, Honey sold for around $4 billion to PayPal. The browser extension supposedly helped consumers save money shopping online. Later reporting uncovered, however, that the extension was swapping out affiliate links from others for its own codes in the process, sparking a big brouhaha online over the business model. Google has now made the Honey model historical by changing its policies to limit injecting, or changing affiliate links and the like. Honey was sweet for investors, but perhaps PayPal is feeling more sticky than suave now that it’s approach to the market has soured.
| TWiST500 | Hello team, we’re adding another ~20 companies to the TWiST500 today in what is perhaps our largest batch to date. We’ve covered a few here in the newsletter over the last week or two, but here are some of the other names that made the cut: | Drata and Vanta: Compliance is no joke, and the work of automating compliance is big business. We’re super bullish on the category, and these are the two standout companies working on the problem. Skyflow: A company that I’ve covered since birth, keeping PII safe in a cyber-insecure world is a pretty good business idea. But when you consider that the AI era means that companies want to put more of their data to work than ever, while protecting privacy, you can imagine why it could see a demand spike. One to watch. SF Compute and Runpod: Two more GPU clouds that we think have a neat or unique twist on their market. And thanks to CoreWeave’s S-1 filing — Alex’s notes here — we know just how much demand there is for these services. We’re bullish on long-term AI compute demand, even as AI models become more efficient over time.
| So keep your eyes peeled on the TWiST500, it’s about to grow. — Alex |
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| From MVP to IPO, Atlassian for Startups provides your team the right tools to plan, track and collaborate on work. Head to https://www.atlassian.com/software/startups to see if you qualify for 50 free seats for 12 months. | This Week in Startups | E2095: On a blockbuster TWiST that’s currently blowing up on social media, Jason and Alex welcome young coding whiz and (by now, likely former) Columbia University sophomore Roy Lee, who went viral after hacking his way around technical interviews at Meta, Capital One, and Amazon. Even after an Amazon exec dropped a dime on Roy, getting him in trouble with his alma mater, he still took the time to stop by the show and give us insight into his new company, InterviewCoder. | E2094: On a special futurist edition of TWiST, Alex welcomes not one but TWO insightful guests. FIRST UP, Zap Energy CEO Benj Conway tells him about the promising future of fusion power technology. THEN, Alex is joined by PolyAI CEO Nikola Mrkšić for a deep dive on how AI will soon revolutionize customer service via ultra-realistic human-like voice assistants. | E2093: Jason and Alex cover CoreWeave’s filing for a $35 billion IPO after explosive revenue growth. But with 77% of its revenue coming from just two customers, is it built to last? Meanwhile, AVRide is bringing autonomous Hyundai robotaxis to Uber in Dallas, pushing the self-driving revolution forward as Waymo scales to 200,000 weekly rides. And finally, Digg is back! | TWiST Partner Offers | Coda: Coda empowers your startup by bringing words, tables, and teams together. Strategize, plan, and track goals effectively with all your valuable data in one place. Go to https://www.coda.io/twist to get started for FREE and get 6 free months of the Team plan. Vanta: Compliance and security shouldn't be a deal-breaker for startups to win new business. Vanta makes it easy for companies to get a SOC 2 report fast. TWiST listeners can get $1,000 off for a limited time at https://www.vanta.com/twist LinkedInJobs: A business is only as strong as its people, and every hire matters. Go to https://www.linkedin.com/twist to post your first job for free. Terms and conditions apply.
| Angel University | Angel University is back! Jason and Mike, President at LAUNCH, are hosting our next live Angel.University workshop in person on Wednesday, April 23rd, in NYC. Jason will be teaching the strategies he’s used to invest $100M+ in 300+ startups over the past decade. Register at: angel.university. | Founder University | Applications are open for Founder University Cohort 10, a 12-week remote pre-accelerator program tailored towards navigating early-startup practices, building an MVP, and growing traction. Submit your application at Founder University— Cohort 10 will kick off Spring 2025! | LAUNCH Accelerator | Applications are open for the 34th cohort of the LAUNCH Accelerator; a 14-week program focused on fundraising and growth. We invest $125K in our accepted companies and help them raise their pre-seed or seed round. Submit your application at LAUNCH Accelerator. | The TWiST500 newsletter is the new, updated, and improved TWiST Ticker. |
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