Technology
Daily Crunch: Microsoft dumps Yammer and makes Viva Engage its preferred enterprise social platform

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Happy V-Day! What happens when you poll crypto traders about whether liking crypto was an “attractive feature”? Well, 4 out of 5 think that’s hella sexy, and 70% said they’d be more likely to go on a date with them if they were into the old ’chains. Our bet is that there may be some confirmation bias in there, because if you were to wave your Ledger wallet at Christine or Haje on a first date, that’d also be the last date. Still, Jacquelyn’s well-timed Valentine’s reporting based on a Binance poll is good news for those among you who like to keep things immutable.
Want a free Disrupt pass? That can be arranged for folks who choose to volunteer at our Early Stage event!
Today, we bring you a great book recommendation from our very own Dominic-Midori: Long out of print since its original publishing in the 1980s, Black Women Writers at Work is a vital contribution to Black literature in the 20th century, and it’s supremely good news that it’s available again. The book features candid interviews with Maya Angelou, Toni Cade Bambara, Gwendolyn Brooks, Alexis De Veaux and many more, highlighting the practices and critical linkages between the work and lived experiences of Black women writers whose work laid the foundation for many who have come after.
The TechCrunch Top 3
- Bye bye, Yammer: There wasn’t much yammering going on here, but Microsoft confirmed that it is getting rid of Yammer to go all-in on Viva Engage, Paul writes. Viva and Yammer chief vice president Murali Sitaram explains: “Over the last several months we’ve heard your feedback that having two apps surfacing similar experiences and the same services and content has introduced confusion and made it challenging to drive adoption and create clarity for end users.”
- Take a deposit, leave a deposit: Andreessen Horowitz led a $4.5 million seed round into ModernFi, which is developing a marketplace that helps banks that need deposits to make loans find what they are looking for, while banks with too many deposits can offload them. Christine has more.
- Hello, it’s more funding calling: In PhonePe’s quest to raise $1 billion, an investor group that included Tiger Global and Ribbit Capital invested another $100 million into “India’s most valuable fintech startup,” which is valued at $12 billion, Manish writes.
Startups and VC
It’s always nice to have a lot of capital to invest, but managing a large new fund can be even more advantageous right now given that many later-stage companies that put off fundraising last year will likely be in the market come hell or high water in 2023, Connie reports. Buyout firm Bain Capital just closed its second growth Tech Opportunities fund with $2.4 billion, up from the $1.3 billion that the outfit put to work through the first vehicle of its type in 2019.
Turning a great idea into a viable startup takes patience, perseverance and more than a little luck. But when an idea originates in a lab — whether it’s AI, biotech, robotics or another deep tech research project — things quickly become tougher and much more expensive. Pae Wu, general partner at SOSV and CTO at IndieBio, will join us onstage at TechCrunch Early Stage on April 20 in Boston. Don’t miss it — get your tickets today!
And we have five more for you:
10 years of fintech failures: 5 innovations that didn’t live up to the hype

Image Credits: Jeffrey Coolidge (opens in a new window) / Getty Images
The tech industry (and the media that covers it) thrives on hype cycles.
Sometimes, relentless cheerleading can bear fruit: Clunky personal digital assistants from the 1990s evolved into sleek smartphones a decade later.
And other times, what seemed like a revolutionary idea turns out to be someone trying to jump-start a fad. (Remember the Google barge, Juicero, and iSmell?)
Looking back over the last decade, TC+ contributor Grant Easterbrook recaps five trends that flopped and the underpinning factors that prevented them from changing fintech “in the way the founders originally intended.”
Three more from the TC+ team, complete with a smattering of retro tunes to keep you going:
TechCrunch+ is our membership program that helps founders and startup teams get ahead of the pack. You can sign up here. Use code “DC” for a 15% discount on an annual subscription!
Big Tech Inc.
It’s easy to come away from a meeting not having caught every bit of what was discussed. That is where Otter.ai comes in with OtterPilot, its new AI meeting assistant. Aisha reports that this feature automatically sends an AI-generated summary of meeting topics to attendees with hyperlinks to key moments. It will also capture slide presentations and insert those in the summary, too. You can now safely get up and use the bathroom during your next virtual meeting and miss nothing.
And we have five more for you:
Technology
Just 7 days until the TC Early Stage early bird flies away


Budget-minded entrepreneurs and early-stage startup founders take heed — this is no time to procrastinate. We have only 7 days left of early-bird pricing to TechCrunch Early Stage 2023 in Boston on April 20.
Don’t wait…the early bird gets the…SAVINGS: Buy a $249 founder pass and save $200 before prices increase on April 1 — that’s no joke.
TC Early Stage is our only event where you get hands-on training with experts to help your business succeed. No need to reinvent the startup wheel — you’ll have access to leading experts across a range of specialties.
During this one-day startup bootcamp, you’ll learn about legal issues, fundraising, marketing, growth, product-market fit, pitching, recruiting and more. We’re talking more than 40 highly engaging presentations, workshops and roundtables with interactive Q&As and plenty of time for networking.
Here are just a few examples of the topics we have on tap. You’ll find plenty more listed in the event agenda.
How to Tell Your TAM: Dayna Grayson from Construct Capital invests in the rebuilding of the most foundational and broken industries of our economy. Industries such as manufacturing and logistics, among others, that formed in an analog world have been neglected by advanced technology. Dayna will talk about how, beyond the idea, founders can pitch investors on their TAM, including how they will wedge into the market and how they will eventually disrupt it.
How to Think About Accelerators and Incubators: Founders often hear they should get involved with an incubator or accelerator, but when is the “right” time for early-stage founders to apply to these types of startup support ecosystems, and how can they best engage if accepted? In this talk, Harvard Innovation Labs executive director Matt Segneri will cover everything from the types of incubators and accelerators available to early-stage founders, to what startups should consider before applying, and tips for getting the most out of these ecosystems.
How to Raise Outside of SV in a Down Market: Silicon Valley’s funding market tends to be more immune to macroeconomic conditions than elsewhere in the world. So how do you raise outside the Valley bubble? General Catalyst’s Mark Crane has ample experience on both the founder and VC side from all over Europe, as well as a firm understanding of the funding landscape in the northeastern U.S., so he’ll give practical advice on how to stay alive and thrive.
At TechCrunch Early Stage you’ll walk away with a deeper working understanding of topics and skills that are essential to startup success. Founders save $200 with an early-bird founder ticket — college students pay just $99!
Technology
Twitter will kill ‘legacy’ blue checks on April 1


Twitter has picked April Fool’s Day, otherwise known as April 1, to start removing legacy blue checkmarks from the platform.
Despite the significance of the day Twitter chose, the removal of legacy checkmarks has been anticipated for months now. Musk tweeted in December that the company would remove those checks “in a few months” because “the way in which they were given out was corrupt and nonsensical.”
Since then, legacy blue checkmark holders have been seeing a pop-up when they click on their checkmark that reads, “This is a legacy verified account. It may or may not be notable.”
Before Musk acquired the company, Twitter used checkmarks to verify individuals and entities as active, authentic and notable accounts of interest. Verified checkmarks were doled out for free.
Today, Twitter users can purchase a blue check through the Twitter Blue subscription model for $8 per month (iOS and Android signups will cost $11 per month, due to app store costs). There are also other checkmark colors and badges available for purchase to denote whether an account is a business or a government, for example.
Twitter says the purchase of a checkmark gives users access to subscriber-only features like fewer ads on their timeline, prioritized ranking in conversations, bookmark folders, and the ability to craft long tweets, edit tweets and undo tweets.
The news comes within hours of Twitter also announcing the availability of the Blue subscription globally.
Twitter did not respond to TechCrunch’s request for more information about how many users have already signed up for Twitter Blue.
Technology
Roofstock, valued at $1.9B last year, cuts 27% of staff in second round of layoffs


Proptech company Roofstock has laid off about 27% of its staff today, according to an email sent to employees viewed by TechCrunch. The cuts come just five months after the startup laid off 20% of its workforce.
The company’s website states that it has 400+ employees, or “Roofsters” as they’re dubbed, but it is not known if that figure is current.
Roofstock, an online marketplace for investing in leased single-family rental homes, one year ago raised $240 million at a $1.9 billion valuation. SoftBank Vision Fund 2 led that financing, which included participation from existing and new backers including Khosla Ventures, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Bain Capital Ventures and others. Roofstock has raised a total of over $365 million in funding since its 2015 inception, per Crunchbase.
According to the email seen by TechCrunch, co-founder and CEO Gary Beasley said today’s reduction in force (RIF) was “in response to the challenging macro environment” and the “negative impact” it is having on Roofstock’s business.
He added that the company was not expecting to have to cut more staff so soon but that it needed to “right size” in an effort “to reduce cash burn rate” and ensure it has “adequate capital runway until the market eventually turns.”
Beasley sent the email because apparently, the Zoom meeting where it was addressed “maxed out on attendees.”
Oakland, Calif.-based Roofstock lets people buy and sell rental homes in dozens of U.S. markets. The premise behind the company is that both institutional and retail investors can buy and sell homes without forcing renters to leave their homes. Meanwhile, buyers can also presumably generate income from day one.
At the time of its raise in March 2022, the company said that it had facilitated more than $5 billion in transaction volume, more than half of which had come from the last year alone.
Just days before its last round of layoffs last year, Roofstock made headlines for selling its first single-family home using NFTs, or non-fungible tokens.
Rising mortgage rates and a slowdown in the housing market led to challenges for many real estate technology companies in 2022 that continue this year. Opendoor, Redfin, Compass, Better.com and Homeward were among the other startups that also laid off workers. IBuyer Reali also announced it was shutting down after raising $100 million the year prior.
TechCrunch has reached out to Roofstock but had not heard back at the time of writing but multiple sources confirmed that layoffs had taken place today.
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