Amazon buys Roomba’s maker, Bolt disappears, and YC slims down – TechCrunch
Hello again! Welcome back to Week in Review, the newsletter where we quickly recap the top stories that hit TechCrunch-dot-com over the past seven days. Want it in your inbox? Get it here.
The most read history this week is a bit of a wild one: Bolt Mobility, an on-demand bike/scooter rental company founded by Usain Bolt, disappeared quite…. “The departure has been abrupt,” writes Rebecca, “leaving cities with abandoned equipment, unanswered calls and emails, and many questions.”
other stuff
Amazon buys iRobot: Bezos wants all the things. Full food! A medical! And now…Roomba? In this latest in a series of seemingly sudden and somewhat surprising acquisitions, Amazon is dropping $1[ads1].7 billion on the company best known for its robotic vacuum cleaners.
Facebook closes live shopping: If you use Facebook’s “live shopping” feature to sell things via stream, it might be time to find a new platform. While live streaming isn’t going away, the dedicated shopping-focused features will go dark in October.
Starbucks is entering web3: I want to roll my eyes, but given how many people I know insist on buying a Starbucks mug from every big city they visit…
More Robinhood layoffs: Ugh. Just a few months ago, Robinhood cut 9% of its full-time staff; this week the company confirmed it is shedding another 23%. Citing over-hiring over the past couple of years, CEO Vlad Tenev writes: “I approved and took responsibility for our ambitious staffing trajectory – this is on me.”
YC is getting smaller: It had to happen eventually. Y Combinator had gotten bigger and bigger with each accelerator class, peaking at an absurd 414 companies in its latest batch. They’re scaling things down a bit with the next cohort – but at about 250 companies it’s still relatively large.
sound thing
Podcasts! Get your podcasts!
This week in the world of TechCrunch podcasts, the Equity team talked about YC’s smaller (but still pretty huge) cohort, Darrell and Becca talked about “Instagram being MySpaced by TikTok” on The TC Podcast, and Burnsy talked to Convoy co-founder Dan Lewis about the shipping company’s “secret growth hacks” on TechCrunch Live.
extra stuff
Glambook’s $2.5 million seed round: Glambook recently raised millions to build what they call the “Uber for the beauty industry.” How did they convince investors to get on board? In this latest edition of his Pitch Deck Teardown series, Haje whirs through the deck and helps explain why certain things worked out.
What actually happens when your startup is acquired?: There’s more to acquiring than waiting for a bag of cash to appear on your desk. Yair Snir, VP of Dell Technologies Capital, gives us the high-level overview of the entire process, “from NDA to LOI.”
Dear Sophie: “How long do I have to stay at my current job after I get my green card?” That’s a reasonable question! Immigration lawyer Sophie Alcorn weighs in.
