Gm. Just realized we haven’t thought about the Elon Twitter deal in at least a week. Here’s to extending that streak. 

FRESH POWDER

Looking at three funds that recently topped up their coffers.

Startup to watch: Fido is a Ghanian fintech company targeting unbanked entrepreneurs and small businesses in West Africa. It provides savings products and ultra small loans (sometimes as little as $250) for individuals and small businesses who are generally overlooked by traditional financial institutions. It just raised a $30 million Series A. 

LEGAL

Roe v. Wade v. Tech 

On Friday, the Supreme court made the monumental decision to eliminate the constitutional right to abortion in the US. While the decision wasn’t a surprise — a draft of the opinion was leaked last month — the implications across the tech and startup world are only starting to become known.  

Big tech draws a line in the sand

HR policies at tech companies across are changing to include travel expense assistance and reimbursement for employees located in states where abortion is illegal. Microsoft, Tesla, Airbnb, Netflix, DoorDash, PayPal, and Reddit are all part of this group. 

• Google took things a step further and sent a company wide email on Friday telling employees in affected states that they can request relocation with no questions asked. 

• Uber and Lyft also said they’ll cover the legal fees for any drivers that gets sued under Texas and Oklahoma laws that prohibit anyone from helping a women get an abortion. 

On the other end of the spectrum, Meta is doing its best Coinbase impression and banning staff from open discussion of Roe v. Wade on its internal messaging systems (though, it is among the companies covering travel expenses for employees).

Startups are dealing with the fall out 

Companies with offices in red states are having a harder time recruiting employees. “They're telling me they're not moving here. They're not applying to our programs,” Erika Lucas, the co-founder of an org that supports women and entrepreneurs of color in Oklahoma told Fortune last month.

And with startup and tech workers increasingly gravitating towards Texas—a state where abortion bans have gone into effect—it’s not an issue that the industry can afford to ignore. 

Bottom line: One additional outcome of a post-Roe v. Wade world is an increased focus on startups that offer abortions through telehealth and medication. Right now, Crunchbase lists just two venture-backed startups targeting this specific issue. But that number is sure to rise as more attention and dollars are directed towards reproductive health in the coming months.

PRIVATE MARKETS

SaaS valuations lose their zen

On Friday, Zendesk agreed to sell itself to a group of PE investors for $10.2 billion representing a 34% premium over its previous day’s share price. Sounds like a nice win for its shareholders right?

• Not so much: The deal comes just 5 months after the SaaS company declined a $17 billion offer from a similar group of investors. 

It’s a scary time for unicorns

Zendesk is generating free-cash flow and saw 30% top line revenue growth last quarter, yet only commanded a ~5-6x sales multiple. That’ll come as a huge shock for late staged unicorns who were seeing SaaS companies priced at 10 to 20 times as much in terms of revenue multiples just last year. 

Bottom line: We’ve known for a while now that valuations have been put in check in recent months. But to see the valuation of a medium-growth SaaS company take a $7 billion haircut in just 5 months illustrates just how tepid investors’ outlook has become. 

QUICK HITS

Seed Round

Stat: The fintech funding pipeline is narrowing: startups in the sector raised $1.5 billion last week compared to $1.4 billion the week prior, but the number of deals dropped from 53 to 39 during the same period. The data indicates that investors are prioritizing later-stage companies and larger check sizes while earlier-stage companies with less traction have fallen out of favor. In other words—you need more than a one-pager these days. 

Story we're watching: In a speech noticeably reminiscent of the late Steve Jobs, Solana co-founder Anatoly Yakovenko shocked the web3 world by announcing a Solana smartphone called “Saga” at NFTnyc. He also introduced the Solana Mobile Stack (SMS), a software toolkit that lets developers build native Android Web3 apps on Solana. It was a surprising announcement, but with the phone not shipping for another year at the least, consumers will have to wait a while before learning if the $1,000 device lives up to the hype.  

Rabbit hole: Life is not short (DKB Show).

WHAT ELSE IS GOING ON

• Stepn, a move-to-earn crypto token, has managed to attract 3 million users despite fallling 97% from its record highs in April. 

• Bird is in danger of getting delisted from the NYSE because its stock is too low. 

• Juul can continue selling its e-cigarette products for the time being after a court order granted it time to file an emergency motion. 

• Zomato acquired Blinkit, a struggling 10-minute grocery delivery startup, in a $568 million deal. 

PICK THAT PITCH DECK

Below is an early pitch deck for a company that went public in October of last year.

Can you guess what the company is?

MONDAY MUSING

How do you think founders should go about company building? 

A. Build something first, then drum up hype

B. Drum up hype first, then start building something

Let us know here. 

LAYOFFS TRACKER

Bitpanda

• Industry: crypto

• Amount laid off: 270

• % of workforce: 27%

• Date of layoffs: 6/24

• List of employees affected: N/A

Ro

• Industry: Healthcare

• Amount laid off: N/A

• % of workforce: 17%

• Date of layoffs: 6/23

• List of employees affected: N/A

FOUNDERS CORNER

The best resources we came across this weekend that will help you become a better founder, builder, or investor.

📹 Mr. Beast explained the YouTube algorithm at VidCon 2022

💸 The 75 slides WayRay used to raise an $80 million Series C

📊 An essay explaining the importance of data-oriented programming

PICK THAT PITCH DECK ANSWER

WeWork!