NEWS | OPPORTUNITIES | BITES
Transmit Security is a Boston-based “startup” which works to rid the world of passwords.
This week, the company raised a massive $543 million in Series A (!) funding at a valuation of $2.2 billion, pre-money. It is the largest Series A investment in cybersecurity history and one of the highest valuations for a bootstrapped company. The round was led by Insight Partners.
According to the company, weak passwords account for more than 80% of all data breaches and the average cost (help desk labor) to reset a single password stands at $70. As a result, organizations lose millions of dollars every year due to “inherently unsafe” password-based authentication.
Transmit has already been adopted by a number of big-name brands including Lowe’s, Santander, HSBC and UBS. The company’s solution currently handles more than 9,000 authentication requests per second and reduces account resets by 96%.
“By eliminating passwords, businesses can immediately reduce churn and cart abandonment. Our customers understand that providing an optimized identity experience is a multimillion-dollar challenge.” - Transmit Security CEO Mickey Boodaei
Transmit Security isn’t the only company that’s on a mission to kill off the password. Microsoft has announced plans to make Windows password-free and Apple recently previewed Passkeys in iCloud Keychain, a method of passwordless authentication through Face ID and Touch ID.
Twitter it turning on the monetization engine, launching its new Super Follow feature and Ticketed Spaces.
If you have 10,000 followers and tweet about once per day, you could be eligible to charge people from $2.99 to $9.99 per month for bonus tweets.
Twitter “Spaces” are live audio chatrooms hosted by users. If you regularly host Twitter Spaces and have at least 1,000 followers, you are eligible to apply for Ticketed Spaces. If granted, you can set ticket prices for other users to join your Space anywhere between $1 and $999. Link
An in-depth analysis by The Bear Cave of Twitter’s new monetization features and the investment opportunity behind Twitter itself.
The first move. The FTC, newly chaired by Amazon critic Lina Khan, will review Amazon’s recent $8.5 billion acquisition of MGM. The transaction is not likely to be stopped, as there remains real competition in the space and MGM has not been able to make its own way. But it is an early indicator of how the FTC is changing its approach to Big Tech’s empire-building with acquisitions like this one. Link
Kuaishou is a Chinese short-video company, and TikTok’s largest rival in China. Its video app Kwai announced that it now has over 1 billion monthly active user (!). In comparison, Facebook’s MAUs stood at 2.9 billion as of March and TikTok itself was forecasted to surpass 1.2 billion MAUs this year. Link
The growing partnership between Amazon and Salesforce took a new step this week, with the two companies announcing a set of new partnerships to “make it easier to share data and build applications that cross the two platforms.” Amazon competes with Microsoft in the public cloud world, and Salesforce competes with Microsoft in the CRM space. So to see these two pair up is not a huge surprise. Link
The European Union opened a formal antitrust investigation against Google around allegations that it abuses its leading role in the advertising-technology sector. The investigation is the most wide-ranging case yet. Link
Big Tech are paying executives, lobbyists and more than a dozen groups to fight off the six bills that are intended to break up the dominance of Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Google. Link
Microsoft announced the launch of its Windows 11 for late November 2021, just in time for Christmas of course. The new operating system will include a range of new features, a redesigned user interface and has MS Teams pre-installed. Link
On Tuesday, Microsoft became the second public US company (After Apple) to reach a $2 trillion market value. Link
US home prices in May rose nearly 24% YoY, the biggest increase on record. The median price for an existing home in the US is now over $350K for the first time ever, and because of it.
While most would-be home buyers struggle to bridge the gap between prices and reality, investment companies like Blackrock and Blackstone are buying up single-family homes, paying 20-50% above asking price, driving up prices and outbidding normal home buyers. Link
Andreessen Horowitz is tripling down on blockchain startups with a new massive $2.2 billion Crypto Fund, the firm’s largest vertical-specific fund ever. Link
All the ways, Amazon is unbundling the bank. From payments and lending to insurance and checking accounts, Amazon is attacking financial services from every angle without even applying to be a conventional bank. Link
NEWS | OPPORTUNITIES | BITES
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Disclosure: I am long DCBO, PEXIP, WIX, OMI. I wrote this article myself, and it expresses my own opinions. I am not receiving compensation for it other than from paid subscribers of my newsletter. I have no business relationship with any company whose stock is mentioned in this article.
Disclaimer: I am not a registered investment, legal or tax advisor or a broker / dealer. All investment / financial opinions expressed by me are from personal research and experience and are intended as educational material. Although best efforts are made to ensure that all information is accurate and up to date, occasionally unintended errors and misprints may occur.