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Fast-growing livestream shopping platform Whatnot acquires Pastel Labs, hires VP of engineering

TechCrunch

To aid on that front, Whatnot is making two key hires, one of which involves the acquisition of Pastel Labs, a company founded in 2020 by Jeff Chang , previously the technical lead for Pinterest’s growth team and a well-known growth advisor. Whatnot even had to relocate from LA to Phoenix for a time.

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On Becoming a VP of Engineering, Part 1: The Path to VP

Honeycomb

This post is part of a short series about my experience in the VP of Engineering role at Honeycomb. In February of 2020, I was promoted from Director of Engineering to Honeycomb’s first VP of Engineering. Happily, all these things turned out to be true and are still true to this day.

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TechCrunch+ roundup: SaaS success stats, leveraging ad tech chaos, 2022 layoff trends

TechCrunch

According to a report by Capchase comparing more than 400 SaaS startups to unicorns that reached the public markets in the last two years, the top performers “are handily beating the ‘Rule of 40,'” reports Kyle Wiggers. According to its findings, SaaS founders should target at least 80% and aim to surpass 110%.

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54gene valuation slashed by over $100M amid job cuts and CEO exit

TechCrunch

In August, it sacked 95 employees , mostly contract staff (in labs and sales departments) hired to work in 54gene’s COVID business line launched in 2020. In September, co-founder and VP of Engineering Ogochukwu Francis Osifo left the company. It’s been a strange couple of months at African genomics startup 54gene.

Biotech 229
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Databricks crossed $350M run rate in Q3, up from $200M one year ago

TechCrunch

Our goal in tracking startups growing at scale is to scout future IPO candidates and better understand the late-stage financing market. The Exchange explores startups, markets and money. Ghodsi took over as CEO in 2016 after serving as the company’s VP of engineering. How do they find that information?

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Pinwheel raises $50M Series B at $500M valuation for its income verification APIs

TechCrunch

Despite competition from other players in the somewhat-crowded payroll API space, Pinwheel has demonstrated significant traction in the market and hopes to differentiate itself by building an entire “income layer” of data for its customers that extends beyond just payroll information. . Pinwheel has hired a number of its employees from $13.4

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Remote raises $150M on a $1B+ valuation to manage payroll and more for organizations’ global workforces

TechCrunch

First and foremost, it will go toward expanding its business to more markets. ” In addition, Remote will be using the funding to continue building more tools and partnerships to integrate with other providers of services in what is a very fragmented human resources market. The funding will be used in a couple of areas.