Daily Crunch: ‘Copy-from-China’ social media app Lemon8 squeezes its way into the US top 10

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Hello, and welcome to your Friday. Did the week last or did it move quickly for you? Or maybe you had today off. Never mind, I’m here to bring you all the technical goodness of today. Today’s lesson: “Never leak data.”

Oh, and support our colleagues at the Chain reaction And Found it podcasts: they were nominated for a Webbyso please support them with a voice by April 20. — Christine

The businessroundups.org Top 3

• That is a tough application: ByteDance’s latest hit, Lemon8, which some describe as a cross between Instagram, Pinterest and Amazon, is now among the top 10 apps in the US. Rita says Lemon8 is more like another app called Xiaohongshu and discusses why ByteDance may have taken another page out of the Chinese playbook.
• Get your unicorn horn ready: You’ll need a businessroundups.org+ subscription to read this next one, but I promise, it’s worth it. Alex went on a unicorn IPO hunt and came back with a list of names, saying, “The first batch of upcoming potential unicorn IPOs is doing well.”
• In a galaxy far, far away: If you are a Star Wars fan, Disney+ will launch a new series called “The Acolyte” in 2024. Aisha writes that this storyline takes place at the end of the High Republic era before the events of the main Star Wars films.

Startups and VC

Everyone needs a good competition to keep the creativity flowing. KyleDevin and Manic teamed up to look at Anthropic’s $5 billion four-year plan to address OpenAI. The trio go through the company’s pitch deck, describing the business model that will take Anthropic there and the investors behind it.

To wrap up the week, as mentioned yesterday, there was a group of us watching Y Combinator’s Winter 2023 Demo Day. Artificial intelligence and open source were big buzzwords on day 1, while on day 2 we wondered if crypto is back and why accountants are suddenly getting a lot of love.

VCs to Re-Sell Startups: Let’s Put Some Tags

Largely due to Generation Z’s interest in sustainable shopping, recommerce is soaring to new heights, and VCs are on the rise.

Since Etsy went public in 2015, companies like Poshmark, The RealReal, and thredUP followed suit, drawing even more investors to the industry. Last year, about $6 billion in VCs poured into resale platforms, writes Brian Schwarzbach, an investor at Cathay Innovation.

In a post for TC+, he explores three recommerce areas that attract VC funds and shares “some food for thought for founders building startups in this (again) emerging space.”

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Big Tech Inc.

Sometimes things don’t go as planned. In India, the central bank decided to halt plans it had for a rival to the country’s dominant payment system, Unified Payments Interface. Manic writes that the project, dubbed New Umbrella Entity, had attracted some attention, sparked interest from major corporations and financial institutions, and invited bids in 2021 for licenses to operate new retail payment and settlement systems across India. However, the project just fell short of the hiss and pops that the Reserve Bank of India was looking for.

Catch a falling iPod and put it in your pocket…Harry reports on Apple’s patent filing for what appears to be a tiny iPod that can do it all: music, videos and books, no smartphone or smartwatch required. Although I’m not sure how you can read on something so small. I think we’ll see.

And we have five more for you: