SBF says he’s “had a bad month,” but is he really giving us the full story? • businessroundups.org

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There is officially only 8.3% left of the year. You know what that means! Holidays, cheers and daydreaming about what kind of jokes we’ll be making in 2024. Yes, 2024, because obviously we’re just skipping all of 2023. We’re already pretty excited about 2025, tbh. — Christine and Hey

The businessroundups.org Top 3

• Famous strong arm: Plant-based food brand Huel’s latest capital raise comes with a side of Idris Elba, Christine writes. The actor and his wife are among a handful of new investors backing British Huel, which offers protein powders, snack bars and hot lunch items. Oh, and Huel is now valued at $560 million. Not too shabby.
• Who’s calling?: Why, it’s smartphone re-commerce startup Badili, which raised $2.1 million in pre-seed funding to partner with individuals and dealers to repurpose phones as demand for more affordable phones soars across Africa. Annie has more.
• Back to his roots: Zoe made a name for itself during the global pandemic when it launched a COVID tracking app. Now it’s returned to its roots as a self-reporting personal nutrition tracker and has a healthy chunk of $30 million (and a $303 million valuation) under its belt to onboard more than 250,000 people who are patiently waiting right now. have waited, Ingrid reports.

Startups and VC

FTX and Sam Bankman-Fried have had plenty of column inches on Ye Olde Teche Crunche over the past few days. Here’s what you need to get started: Natasha M dealt with SBF claiming mass ignorance of apparent conflict in FTX’s demise. Amanda adds that he says journalists are actually good, while Connie wonders if his interview performance was a bit of a performance.

Web3 developer platform Fleek has raised $25 million in Series A funding led by Polychain Capital, the company said Jaquelyn. The startup aims to build an interface and protocol layer “to make the basic layer of the web[3] services”, such as storage, hosting and billing, accessible to everyone.

And we have five more for you:

Proptech in Review: 3 investors explain why they are optimistic about technology that makes buildings greener

Investors working at the intersection of climate technology and proptech are looking for potentially profitable startups that can reduce emissions and improve the built environment.

It’s a balancing act with big risks, but given the benefit to category winners and the health of the planet, “the potential market is huge,” reports Tim De Chant. For his second proptech investor survey in a three-part series, he interviewed:

• Jake Fingert, managing partner, and Lionel Foster, investor, Camber Creek
• Anja Rath, Managing Partner, PropTech1 Ventures
• Othmane Zrikem, chief data officer, A/O Proptech

Three more from the TC+ team:

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Big Tech Inc.

Before we get into the news, we’d like to offer the AWS re:Invent 2022 link again because Kyle, Ron and Frederick more stories added today.

OK, here we go. Yesterday, Bret Taylor shocked us by stepping down as co-chairman and CEO of Salesforce to “return to his entrepreneurial roots”. Ron reports. After thinking about it overnight, Ron also provided more insight into Taylor’s move and what the future could hold for the CRM giant (TC+ subscription required).

If you rush to Google every day to see the new Doodle, the latest version lets you create your very own mini arcade game in honor of the late video game pioneer Jerry Lawson, who would have turned 82 today. Aisha has more.

In the meantime, Brian wrote a story yesterday reporting that “San Francisco police can now use robots to kill.” Today he elaborates on his Actuator column. Enjoying!

And we have five more for you: