Bitcoin News Australia

A Super Bowl commercial for ecommerce platform Temu depicts a woman scoring outrageously cheap deals, including a $9.99 red evening gown. “Shop like a billionaire,” the ad says.

It turns out American consumers worried about inflation enjoy Temu bestsellers like ~$10 Lenovo earbuds and ~$3 sunglasses.

It’s now the most-downloaded app in the US, with 24m downloads since its September launch and 11m+ monthly active users, per CNN.

Why’s it so cheap?

Temu is based in Boston, but owned by China’s PDD Holdings Inc. PDD also owns Pinduoduo, a shopping platform with ~900m users, and  generated $14.7B in 2021 revenue.

As such, it can cut out the middleman and ship directly from China, with no need for US warehouses, in ~7-15 days, per Wired.

Temu drives prices even lower with perks like free shipping and referral-based discounts, but it’s unclear if that’s sustainable. Some analysts think it may be subsidizing customers to gain users.

Is the stuff any good?

At first blush, Temu looks kind of like Wish, whose products are often so bad it’s become a meme.

The influencers with whom Temu has partnered may declare everything in their hauls as “sooooo cute,” but other creators have noted a mix of good and meh products, longer shipping times, and damaged or incorrect items.

It’s also racked up 127 complaints on the Better Business Bureau website, where its rating is a measly 1.8 stars.

Meanwhile, in China, the deaths of two Pinduoduo workers have led many to call for a boycott — which is reminiscent of Shein, another fast-fashion, bargain app under fire for labor and environmental concerns.

Venture capital’s “next big thing” may just be weathering a period of austerity.

Globally, in the fourth quarter, VC firms raised $20.6B in new funds, according to The Wall Street Journal. For context:

• That’s the first Q3-Q4 decrease since 2009, a 65% drop from Q4 2021, and the worst fourth quarter since 2013.

The fourth quarter also saw limited partners (who back VC funds) invest in the fewest funds of any fourth quarter — 226 — since 2012. (They backed 620 in Q4 2021).

Why the drop? Big-picture, macroeconomic conditions like rising interest rates and inflation have weighed heavily on the tech industry.

This has slowed the pace of investing, and created fewer opportunities to back funds. Further, fewer tech companies are going public, typically a source of cash that limited partners use to reinvest in venture funds.

Limited partners have also become more selective, per WSJ, backing just 141 funds headed by first-time managers in 2022, down 59% YoY and the lowest number since 2013.

1) Here’s something to chew on: Founded in 1883, grocery chain Kroger has a retail data science operation called 84.51 — a nod to the longitude of its Cincinnati headquarters — that sells data about product sales to 1.4k+ companies. Kroger says its data spans 2B annual transactions across 60m households.

2) Manchester United is up for sale by the Glazer family, and bids are in, including one from the executive of a Qatar bank and another from a British billionaire. The publicly traded team has a market cap of $4.34B. Last year, Chelsea sold for a record $5.3B, and the Denver Broncos sold for $4.65B.

3) Interested in living near Mick Jagger and Tommy Hilfiger? The Terraces, situated on the private island of Mustique, recently listed for $200m, making it the Caribbean’s priciest house.

4) Some SpaceX Starlink internet users were invited to test a “Global Roaming” service for $200/mo. The service would enable a Starlink to “connect from almost anywhere on land in the world.”

5) TikTok launched a beta version of a creator fund called the “Creativity Program.” Eligibility requirements include creating high-quality, original videos that are longer than one minute — yet another indication that we should all band together and resurrect Vine.