|
|
Tuesday, 08 November 2022
|
|
Partners
|
|
|
Good morning!
|
"When he looked East, he saw the past, old, tired, dead. But when he looked West, he saw the future; gold in the ground, gold in the fields and no dragons in the sky but his."
|
That excerpt from Ice and Fire was what came to mind when the news that Yassir, the Algerian startup has raised 150 million dollars from a series B round led by New York-based growth-stage focused VC firm, BOND.
|
This excerpt particularly resonated with me today because I have been thinking about Jumia, which made the news yesterday after its founders stepped down from their co-CEO roles at the company, exactly ten years after it became operational. (For the record, I did an internship at Jumia.)
|
There is a trend here with some foreign VCs, I think. They pump these super apps with bright prospects with all the money in the world. They act like it's just another regular funding round. They ignore all the controversies as long as the business is on the right track. And when it's time, when it's ripe and profitable and the business model is clear, they come, "gold in the ground, gold in the fields and no dragons in the sky but theirs."
|
If this newsletter was forwarded to you, click here to subscribe now.
|
|
Below are the tech stories and news you need to know to start your day, carefully curated by Technext.
|
|
|
|
|
Summary of the news
|
- Meta is reportedly planning to lay off employees this week
- Jeremy Hodara and Sacha Poignonnec have stepped down as Jumia's co-CEOs
- Twitter competitor, Mastodon has reached 1 million active monthly users
- Yassir has raised $150 Million in a series B funding round
|
|
|
Meta to lay off staff this week
|
|
Meta, formerly known as Facebook, is planning major job cuts that could affect thousands of workers this week, according to a report from the Wall Street Journal.
|
According to Technext, the alleged layoff by Meta is expected to be the largest in the company’s history amidst rising costs and a recent collapse of the company’s share price. Sources familiar with the situation claim the layoffs could begin as soon as Wednesday.
|
Mark Zuckerberg, founder and CEO of the company, hinted at the impending layoffs in a Facebook post during the earnings call last month on 26 October 2022.
|
See an excerpt from Zuckerberg below:
|
|
|
|
In 2023, we’re going to focus our investments on a small number of high priority growth areas. So that means some teams will grow meaningfully, but most other teams will stay flat or shrink over the next year. In aggregate, we expect to end 2023 as either roughly the same size, or even a slightly smaller organisation than we are today.
|
|
|
|
|
A word from our partners!
|
|
|
Write about all the awesome things you’ve built or are building with Fincra’s APIs and stand a chance to win cash prizes 🚀
|
|
|
|
Jumia founders step down as co-CEOs
|
|
TechCrunch reports that the announcement was made in a press statement sent out yesterday by the company’s Supervisory Board as part of a management shakeup. The statement says that Francis Dufay, who was until recently the executive vice president for Jumia Africa, overseeing its entire operation on the continent, will step into the CEO role at the company.
|
|
|
We thank Jeremy and Sacha for their leadership over the last decade to envision and build a company that became the leading pan-African e-commerce player.
As we look ahead to the next chapter of Jumia’s journey, we want to bring more focus to the core e-commerce business as part of a more simplified and efficient organization with stronger fundamentals and a clearer path to profitability.
We look forward to working closely with Francis, Antoine and the leadership team to execute on these objectives and continue on our mission of offering a compelling e-commerce platform to consumers, sellers and the broader Jumia ecosystem in Africa.
|
|
|
|
|
Twitter competitor, Mastodon reach 1m active monthly users
|
|
Mastodon, the decentralized social network that’s increasingly being positioned as an alternative to Twitter, has eclipsed 1 million active monthly users. That’s according to CEO and lead developer Eugen Rochko, who revealed the milestone in a post on Monday morning, TechCrunch reports.
|
Germany-based Mastodon has experienced rapid growth since Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter, with nearly half a million users joining the network since October 27. While a fraction of the size of Twitter’s 238 million daily active users, Mastodon’s user base remains on a steep upward trajectory, growing from 60-80 new user registrations per hour prior to October 27 to thousands of registrations per hour today.
|
Mastodon offers an experience in many ways comparable to Twitter’s, with features like hashtags, replies, bookmarking and retweet-like “boosting.” But unlike Twitter, the network is ad-free and distributed across thousands of servers organized around interests and geographic regions, run largely by volunteers who join their individual systems together in a federation.
|
|
Twitter’s controversial new ownership — and recent product changes — have supercharged Mastodon’s expansion. Some users say that they were inspired to switch to Mastodon over to concerns about how Twitter’s functionality may change under Musk’s control, while others joined as a form of protest against Twitter’s new paid verification scheme and Musk’s heavy-handed approach to moderating certain forms of satire.
|
|
|
|
Yassir raise $150 Million for expansion into Africa
|
|
Yassir, an African super app platform that offers on-demand services such as ride-hailing, food and grocery delivery, and payments, has raised $150 million in Series B funding, five times what it raised in its previous priced round last November, TechCrunch reports.
|
The investment was led by BOND, the growth-stage firm that Mary Meeker spun out of Kleiner Perkins in 2018. Other investors in the growth round include DN Capital, Dorsal Capital, Quiet Capital, Stanford Alumni Ventures, and Y Combinator via its Continuity Fund, among other strategic investors.
|
The African startup, first launched in Algeria, has now raised $193.25 million since its inception in 2017. While its valuation remains undisclosed, Yassir considers itself the most valuable startup in North Africa and one of the highest-valued startups in Africa and the Middle East, where it plans to expand in the coming months.
|
|
|
Our business model from day one was a super add model and getting into payments. When we first started, the observation was that most people were unbanked, and the number one reason is that people don’t trust the banking systems here for various reasons.
We thought we could provide on-demand services that solve immediate needs around where people spent their money. We knew if we executed well, we could have a large user base that subconsciously trusts us, which we felt was pertinent to offering payment services.
|
|
|
|
|
Latest in funding
|
|
|
|
|
Other stories we are following
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
    
|
|
|
|
|
|
