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Updated on Oct 20, 2023
1. Apartool, the executive housing rental platform, raises €5.5M👨🏻💼🏠.
Although Zoom, Teams and co. have considerably reduced travel for meetings, 🛫 medium and long-stay travel for employees of thousands of companies around the world is growing 📈.
Opting for a home instead of a hotel offers a plus (not only in terms of price) for the posted worker 👨🏻💻. Companies are increasingly opting to retain talent and offering them a home to return to after an exhausting 🥱 working day helps to stabilise the change. [Who hasn't experienced the famous hotel syndrome where one wonders: "but what 🤬 am I doing here, so many 🤬 thousand kilometres away from home? (It is recommended to look up the exact distance on google maps so that the lament 😪 is rigorous)].
Apartools, in particular, offers the company the advantage of booking from a single space and managing the accommodation of its teams, unified billing and month-to-month payments. Not only this: they are also in charge of negotiating with real estate agents 🙏🏻 and supplies 🛜 and cleaning 🧹 are included in the price.
The €5.5M investment responds to 3 objectives: technological development📲, product positioning ✌🏼 and international expansion 🌍. In the latter, they aim to lead corporate accommodation in Europe and the Middle East by 2025. In 2023, they expect a turnover of €15M💰.
The operation has resulted in the entry of investors, such as Barlon Capital (the fund led by Javier Rubió and Didac Lee and has Messi ⚽️ among its investors), but also of exit as EconomistesBAN, which leaves with an interesting multiple 💪🏼 since they bet on the company in 2019.
👉🏻 Here you can read the news about the investment round, investors and the company.
👉🏻 Here to learn more about Apartool and its value proposition.
2. OpenAI reaches 81.000M€ valuation and multiplies x4 its valuation in less than a year 🤯💰.
OpenAI is negotiating the sale of remaining shares held by its employees. On completion of this sale, the valuation would reach $86,000M (around €81,000M) and we would be talking about one of the most valuable unlisted technology companies in the world. So much so that it would only be surpassed by SpaceX and ByteDance (parent company of TikTok).
Popularised by its human language interface 🗣️, ChatGPT, Openai has been the great technological revolution of recent years. Everything points to a radical paradigm shift 🧭, where regulations, new applications of artificial intelligence and the impact on the world we know is more or less realistic🚨.
Although it is not the only player in the market, OpenAI is leading the development of this technology and Microsoft made a winning strategic move 🏆 by taking 49%.
Meanwhile, one of its eternal rivals in the AI race, Google, is trying to reposition itself with 🚀 its own launches 🚀 such as Bard or Palm2. However, all expectations are on Gemini, Google's big AI project.
👉🏻 Click here to read about the latest OpenAI🤖 assessment.
👉🏻 Here to read about Google's presentation of Gemini a month ago. They're losing the story for now, but this presentation promises to be a script twist where AI affects search 🔎. We can't wait to see it🥹.
👉🏻 If you have in mind to start an AI startup, we can help you with the optimal business model 👌🏼 and develop the technology solution. Make an appointment with us here 📅 and one of our experts 📲 will call you to discuss your project.
3. Remember when Netflix raised prices and blocked shared accounts? Spoiler: it worked🤫😏.
Netflix's strategy has paid off. The 3 decisions on plans, pricing and product have shown that they nailed it:
1. lock shared accounts: banning 🚫 password sharing has expanded their user base.
2. Increase prices in their plans: if you have more paying users 💸 and they pay you more, you earn more. Easy, yes, when it has already worked😎.
3. Plan with ads at a lower price: there are users who prefer to spend less 👊🏼 even if they see ads. A "lite" product compensated by advertising revenue 📺 makes every last rebellious user profitable🎸.
The stock market trusts and applauds 👏🏼 the good results presented, the best since the pandemic upturn when we only had Netflix left to see new faces 🙃.
👉🏻 Here the news of Netflix and its good stock market results.
👉🏻 Here is Netflix's website for investors with results by quarter and the company's vision.
👉🏻 Here you can read our Jekyll Insight on the subscription boom.
4. Catch, the Insurtech that left us in March and is now resuscitated with new propietarias👋🏼🙋🏼♀️🙋🏼♀️.
Catch is an Insurtech that offers ☔️ coverage and health insurance 🏥 to freelancers and self-employed workers in the USA. In the US market, not having corporate support can be a problem when it comes to getting health insurance. If you also think long term, for a freelancer, retirement 👴🏼 is impossible unless you make your own retirement plans with savings during your working life 🐖 🐖.
So Catch was born, to support the nearly 60 million self-employed (Gig Workers) living and working in the country. It made perfect sense, but execution led its founders, despite the good reception, to see the company as unviable.
The original founders opted to close 🔒 in March, gave their explanations and declared that they still believed in Catch's raison d'être, but that they were not the people 😨 destined 😨 to make it happen.
Meanwhile, two women who had left the corporate world 🤘🏼 to found their own Insurtech (and who were also Catch clients in their self-employed capacity) watched this closure stunned😧🫢.
The end: they traded concern for action 🎬, acquired Catch from its founders, stalled their plans to found the new insurtech and are now about to launch the new Catch in early November 🚀.
You might be wondering, how are they going to make it viable? The truth is Catch is still solving the GigWorkers health insurance problem but their new coCEOs have pruned ✂️ the offering to avoid repeating the mistake.
👉🏻 Click here to know in detail the story of Catch, the startup that was resurrected after 7 months 🌱 thanks to two investor-user-fans-CEOs🙋🏼♀️🙋🏼♀️.
👉🏻 Get to know Catch here and see its qualification process 📊 and real-time health insurance search results and good UX in the comparison 😍.
5. Elon rolls out X's (formerly Twitter) "not a bot" plan and ponders whether to stay in Europe 🇪🇺🤠.
Elon 😏 always leaves us with an interesting Friday. His latest plans for the X platform (of which he is no longer supposed to be CEO but hey):
1) Launches Not A Bot 🤖🙅🏻**:** a pilot where new users are charged if they want to post. They can read, watch videos and follow accounts for free, but to post they have to pay. For now in the Philippines and New Zealand, but extendable if it works in other markets. We'll see🧐.
2) It is considering leaving the market Europeo🧑🏼🚀: to avoid having to comply with the Digital Services Regulation. As Meta already did by blocking Threads, Elon says that if the EU doesn't accept octopus as a pet, he's taking the scategories with him.
👉🏻 Here his plans Not a Bot on trial 🧪.
👉🏻 Here his doubts about continuing in Europe 🇪🇺 due to regulatory issues.
👉🏻 Here the Scatergories ad 🐙 reminding you that you are not GenZeta.
