Development Team Optimization, O-1A Visa Criteria, Golden Growth Metric – TechCrunch

All startups need to grow, but as markets contract, conserving resources is a near-term priority.

Crypto exchange Coinbase is making headlines this morning after it was announced that it had canceled exceptional job offers for some candidates.

Yesterday we reported that IRL, a social app, was laying off 25% of its staff a year after raising $170m in Series A, even though it has enough cash to operate for another two years.

I have no idea about the finances of IRL or Coinbase, but I can say with certainty that these companies will now have a harder time hiring talented employees.


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Tech isn’t like other industries: workers can explore unique personal interests while earning a stake in a potential unicorn.

But they also have options. If you ghosted someone after making a verbal job offer, this will be considered by future applicants. People are talking!

At this point, most tech workers are probably wondering when layoffs are coming to their company. To build trust and keep employees engaged, managers need to optimize existing engineering resources, says Ammar Bandukwala, co-founder and CEO of Coder.

“High-performing IT teams — who could deploy and push code to production faster than their peers — experienced 60x fewer failures and recovered 168x faster,” he writes in TechCrunch+.

If you manage a software engineering team, I hope you will read and share.

Have a great weekend,

Walter Thompson
Editor-in-Chief, TechCrunch+
@yourprotagonist

How to Improve Retention, Growth Marketing’s Golden Measure

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After helping someone prepare dinner, I was dismayed when I was informed that the broccoli stalks I had just tossed in the compost were excellent for making vegetable stock, as a pizza topping, or added to a stir-fry.

Jonathan Martinez’s last article on growth marketing reminded me of this, as many companies throw away perfectly good data that can boost retention and conversion.

“It is imperative to continuously analyze sources of growth at a detailed and bottom-of-funnel level,” he writes.

8 IT spending trends for the post-pandemic business in 2022

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Market research firm ETR reached out to 1,200 IT managers who oversee a collective annual IT budget of around $570 billion to learn more about their planned spending over the coming year.

Although year-over-year spending is only expected to grow 6.7%, “the need for experienced IT staff has accelerated and demand for hiring in the space has peaked we’ve ever seen,” ETR chief analyst Erik Bradley wrote.

What connects stock market contraction to startup valuations?

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Without falling on a dark note: tech layoffs are on the rise, investors are urging their portfolio companies to fold, and founders are doing everything but casting spells to reduce their burn rate.

“But are valuations really falling?” asks Daniel Faloppa, founder of Equidam.

“For all startups? If so, why and what can we expect in the short and medium term?

Pro-rating is easier to get than ever today, but investors are thinking twice

Sliced ​​matcha cheesecake on pink seamless background.  prorated rights startups

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“Whenever prorated rights are involved, you can always feel some drama,” Rebecca Szkutak writes in her inaugural TechCrunch+ post.

Early investors have reserved the right to retain stakes in startups that raise additional capital, but with venture capital funding slowing, it’s unclear whether they’ll want to do so.

“Pro-rating allocation becomes easier for us to hit and get the whole thing,” said Eric Bahn, co-founder and general partner of Hustle Fund.

Pitch Rig Teardown: Encore’s $3 Million Seed Rig

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Cloud-based software development platform Encore has shared the pitch deck its founders used to raise a $3 million seed round with TechCrunch+.

Using 24 slides, the game identifies four fundamental problems in building modern software that Encore aims to solve while using non-technical language to fully explain its value proposition.

“There’s a lot to like about Encore’s deck: it simplifies a complex product story into a few easy-to-digest slides and shows why there’s an opportunity in the market,” writes Haje Jan Kamps.

It’s the beginning of the era of unbundled databases

hand holding several gift wrapped boxes.  unbundled databases

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As customers have moved online over the past couple of years, companies have realized the benefits of storing as much customer data as possible to improve their products and services.

However, old-school relational databases running from farms won’t be able to meet performance requirements any longer. As enterprises shift more operations to the cloud, their databases are also evolving, writes Ethan Batraski, partner at Venrock.

“A new class of cloud database companies is emerging, effectively deconstructing the traditional database monolith stack into layered core services – storage, compute, optimization, query planning, indexing, functions and more.”

Dear Sophie: How do you qualify for each of the O-1A criteria?

Lone figure at the entrance to the maze hedge which has an American flag in the center

Picture credits: Bryce Durbin/TechCrunch

Dear Sophia,

Our startup will sponsor my co-founders and I for O-1A visas.

How do you qualify for each of the O-1A criteria?

— Extraordinary entrepreneur

Venture capital funding for crypto projects fell in May, but many investors remain optimistic

Image of smiling person putting coin in piggy bank.

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Many boosters are calling this the start of “crypto winter,” but even though investment slowed in May, bullish investors are still bringing their floats and diving into the pool like it’s summer.

The amount of capital deployed into crypto is down in the near term, but it’s still significantly above levels from a year ago: Investments in the space last month rose 89% to 4.22 billion, up from $2.23 billion in May 2021, reports Jacquelyn Melinek.

“For investors like us, it’s time to buy,” Stan Miroshnik, partner and co-founder of 10T Holdings, told Jacquelyn. “Valuations have arrived and large companies are now available at a more reasonable price.”

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